Raw Eggs

[PaleoPhil]

It begins to take too much of my time to dutifully answer to all these attacks. Therefore, I’m considering to ask GS to remove me from the moderators list because I feel less and less at home in a forum that should be renamed “Raw Neolithic Forum”.

I hope you don't do that, Francois, as I find your posts to be some of the best here. I wasn't trying to attack you or suggest that this be changed to a Neolithic forum.

I actually was originally drawn to this forum in part because it was one of the few that didn't push dairy (though it did have a dairy section) and felt welcoming to a nondairy meat eater like myself at the time, and I had been turned off by the unpolite and unscientific way that some dairy proponents attacked Loren Cordain, Ray Audette, myself and other nondairy Paleo dieters at forums and blogs like the PALEODIET and PALEOFOOD listservs and ZIOH. Even here some plant-oriented troll criticized my diet in the past as not truly Paleo or facultatively carnivorous because I wasn't eating dairy at the time, IIRC.

Since then, I've found some of the pro-dairy evidence and points shared here and elsewhere persuasive, and growing new scientific evidence has been found that seems to show dairy in a more positive light, and some of my experiments with dairy foods have gone pretty well so far (albeit a minority), plus dairy was never one of my worst foods. Even pasteurized dairy never had as negative effects on me as gluten grains. I'm still also open to your counter-arguments and try to remain always open-minded to good evidence.

What if it turns out there is a sense in which some raw dairy foods might be considered not "junk", maybe even "Paleo," depending on one's definition of that term? If you find that notion too upsetting to consider, I won't pursue it with you further.

[Iguana]

I hope you don't do that, Francois, as I find your posts to be some of the best here. I wasn't trying to attack you or suggest that this be changed to a Neolithic forum.

Thank you. No, I won’t do it right now and it wouldn’t be because of you but rather because of a general and growing trend here.  Anyway I’ll be very busy from now until the months to come and won’t be able to post much.

What if it turns out there is a sense in which some raw dairy foods might be considered not "junk", maybe even "Paleo," depending on one's definition of that term? If you find that notion too upsetting to consider, I won't pursue it with you further.

I’m curious how dairy could be considered “paleo”.  Even if tiny amounts of milk were perhaps sporadically available to hominids during the Paleolithic era, then what? We don’t consider grilled food as raw because some food might have been naturally grilled on the lava after a volcanic eruption! We don’t consider wheat as paleo because a little bit of grain from wild grasses was certainly already available during the Paleolithic! 

[svrn]

maybe theres no such hing as paleo. Maybe civilization has been around for millions of years and maybe its a lie that sumeria is the first civilization. Maybe humans have been doing raw dairy for millions of years?

[Iguana]

Maybe, maybe... But then humans would have been cooking for millions of years too and we would be well adapted to cooked food, so it would be senseless to eat raw.

That said, I don't dispute the fact that there have certainly been a few civilizations before Sumeria, some probably still unknown. On the other hand, there are still some hunters-gatherers today who never drink milk. Before WW II, most South-East Asians and Pacific Islanders never drank milk either.

[PaleoPhil]

What if raw fermented milk requires little adaptation because it's one of the natural food substances (along with honey and others), what if the microbes in the RF milk and in our guts can do much of the digesting for us, what if the fat fraction (ie raw butter) doesn't happen to trigger any harm or even provide benefits in most people, what if any toxins in milk or fractions of it have beneficial hormetic effects in limited amounts, the way plant toxins may? Would it still not be Paleo just because it wasn't a staple food in the past? And if dairy is not Paleo because it wasn't a staple in the past, then what of almonds, if it's true as reported that they were too toxic to eat as staples before they were domesticated? If almonds are Paleo because they are akin to other tree nuts that were staple foods, then what if butter is similarly akin to animal body fat? These questions don't seem to have been answered with finality one way or the other, so I don't understand how we can rule all dairy out as non-Paleo at this point, nor how some "Paleos" can rule out other controversial foods as nonPaleo, such as honey as "sugar," fruits as "tree candy," tubers as too starchy and turning into sugar in our bodies or as not preferred enough in Paleo days to have been staples that we could have adapted to, etc., when the picture is less than clear about those and other claims too.

[HIT_it_RAW]

I just don't see why this discussion keeps on coming up. To me raw paleo simply means
A. Raw; Unadulterated pure food. Not processed in any way.
B. Paleo. Food that was around in paleo times.

Milk most definitely was around in paleo times! Maybe we did and maybe we didn't eat it, some did some didn't. But is was there. As a result some can and some cannot tolerate it. Same with other foods. Some can tolerate honey some can't etc.

If raw paleo milk (raw and from a animal on a natural diet) suits you, fine use it. If not don't. Simple..?
The notion that our instincts work for raw meat but not raw dairy is IMO absurd. Our instincts simple evaluate input from our senses, they react to chemical substances. Sure cooking chemically alters those compounds thus there the instincts are thrown of. If raw, milk is no different than meat, suet, liver etc just different combinations of the same natural compounds. Why would our instincts be able to evaluate our mothers milk but not that of a cow? After all they can evaluate the flesh of the cow as well.

Anyways have fun debating this... You know you love it

[eveheart]

maybe theres no such hing as paleo. Maybe civilization has been around for millions of years and maybe its a lie that sumeria is the first civilization. Maybe humans have been doing raw dairy for millions of years?

I think you are mixing the various definitions of civilization. Sumaria is qualified as the first civilization only under the most restrictive use of the word.

[raw-al]

Troll, Iguana, PP, HIR,
I agree with your last four posts. Each one sheds a bit of light on things that I believe to be true. I do not think the Sumerians were the first just because no others have been found. There are other clues around that people do not wish to accept because it blows up their castles made of sand, like the walls off Bermuda, etc. Down through history many libraries have been burned including Alexandria etc. Nazis did it. George Bush would have liked to do it except that he would have put his wife out of work. LOL

The Japanese never ate beef till recently and I believe a lot of places in the world that are veges or close to it have simply run out of meat, because whether everyone here on this site is in complete denial or not, just because raw meat is a healthy choice, IMO, does not mean that if everyone on earth could suddenly start on our diet that there would be enough meat to go around. Naturally the world's food focus would change and adjust to a certain degree.

However having said that if everyone truly did go to raw meat, I believe based on my own experience that they would eat considerably less and things like fridges and stoves would become relics along with the massive amounts of energy required to power them. Also women (typically) would be freed up from the necessity of food preparations allowing them to be able to do other things.

Grain production would be diverted to feeding animals, but I suspect there would be a shortage of meat, especially in some areas of the world with a large population.

[Iguana]

Milk most definitely was around in paleo times! Maybe we did and maybe we didn't eat it, some did some didn't. But is was there.

Yes it was there, produced just in time by lactating females for their offspring exclusively. Only young ones drank milk, and only the milk of their mother – baring very rare exceptional cases. Every milk is species specific, its composition being expressly adapted to the offspring of that particular species and their specific needs. No adult could drink milk, either from a female of its own species nor from  a female of another species.

Please try to approach a wild lactating female and go to suck some milk from her. Tell us when you succeed. Better if someone can take a photo of you drinking the milk straight from a deer or  wild boar in a forest. You’ll get world famous very quickly.

Or if you happen to kill her, see if you can get any milk at all while trying to do better than Bruno Comby.

The notion that our instincts work for raw meat but not raw dairy is IMO absurd. Our instincts simple evaluate input from our senses, they react to chemical substances.

It doesn’t seem to be that simple. The chemical substances must be in organic, unprocessed natural form and have been available in the environment of our origins. That’s why our instinct doesn’t work with ethylene-glycol, white refined sugar and milk from other animals species.

Sure cooking chemically alters those compounds thus there the instincts are thrown of. If raw, milk is no different than meat, suet, liver etc just different combinations of the same natural compounds. Why would our instincts be able to evaluate our mothers milk but not that of a cow? After all they can evaluate the flesh of the cow as well.

Because no human  could ever drink the milk of a cow (supposing such animal existed, which is not the case) before we domesticated some wild ancestor about 8000 years ago. There’s already a problem with “cow meat” because such cows are not found in nature: they are animals we have selected over hundreds of generations. Thus, it appeared that our instinct doesn’t evaluate entirely correctly the flesh of a cow.

[LePatron7]

I was actually thinking maybe eggs are like dairy. The inside of an egg is designed to be the nourishment for a developing chick. The function of an egg seems to be very similar to that of milk.

[Iguana]

The big difference is that eggs are easier to gather than milk!

Indeed, and I've read accounts saying that prairie bird eggs were so plentiful, in season, and so easy to obtain (the nests were on the ground), that the Lakota people left most of the egg-gathering to little children (with at least one chaperon, of course).

[PaleoPhil]

The notion that our instincts work for raw meat but not raw dairy is IMO absurd.

Well said. It is a natural raw food substance that our alliesthetic instincts should work with, if GCB is correct about food instincts. 

The Japanese never ate beef till recently

Are you talking just about bovines, or red meat in general and pork, etc.? Have you heard about the ancient Jomon, Ainu and Yayoi meat-eating peoples, from whom most of today's Japanese descend?

"The Jomon period (... Jomon jidai?) is the time in Prehistoric Japan from about 14,000 BC[1][2] to about 300 BC, when Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jomon_people

"The main concern of Jomon people was the hunting of larger game such as deer (Cervus sp.) and wild boai (Sus sp.). This view is supported by the evidence that these are dominant species in midden deposits of Jomon sites and their nutritional value per individual is much higher than the other species (e.g., K. Hayashi, 1971; Nishimoto, 1978)." http://www.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/publish_db/Bulletin/no27/no27006.html

"The Ainu have been depicted as "mysterious proto-Caucasians" unrelated to Japanese people. However, DNA research shows that Ainu are the direct descendants of the Jomon, the ancient people who created Japan's first culture and one of the world's oldest extant potteries. This means that the Ainu and present-day Japanese are biologically related." http://www.japanfocus.org/-Chisato__Kitty_-Dubreuil/2589

"The Ainu ... also called Aynu, Aino ..., and in historical texts Ezo ..., are an indigenous people in Japan (Hokkaido) and Russia (Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands). ... The Ainu were a society of hunter-gatherers, who lived mainly by hunting and fishing, and the people followed a religion based on phenomena of nature.[9 NOVA Online – Island of the Spirits – Origins of the Ainu". Retrieved on May 8, 2008.]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people#Hunting

Genetic kinship found between Ainu and native Okinawans, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201211010059
"the Yayoi, intermarried with the native Jomon people on Honshu and Kyushu. Most people in Japan today carry the genetic fingerprints of both groups. However, characteristics of the original Jomon genome are more prevalent in the Ainu and native Okinawans."
 
"Apart from rice, however, pigs and dogs also entered Japan, and so did the habit of using them for food [by the Yayoi]." http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/publication/titles/titles_pdf/070006.pdf

Even if you're just talking about bovines, does anyone think that the kobe beef that were introduced into Japan in the 2nd century AD were never eaten when they could no longer plow?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

and I believe a lot of places in the world that are veges or close to it

In "vege" diets, are you including dairy, honey, insects, fungi and algae (none of which are truly plants)?

Please try to approach a wild lactating female and go to suck some milk from her.

That's not how it's done. Voila:   

Adults consuming milk of wild mammals among HGs, traditional pastoralists, mature domesticated bulls, oxpeckers and feral cats:

> From The Old Way: A Story of the First People, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, page 23:
"When I got there, the mother gemsbok and her calf were dead and the leopard had run away. ... The mother had milk in her udder, which had four teats like goats' teats, all covered with hair, two large teats in front and two small teats behind. The two men milked her, stroking the milk veins in the bag, milking a squirt into their palm and licking it off. The gemsbok, lying on her side with one hind leg lightly raised, was so big that both men could squat below the leg to milk her. I tasted some milk, which was strong and gamey, also harsh and salty, very different from the mild, sweet milk of cows. Then the two men rolled her on her back, skinned and opened her belly, then opened the rumen. ...."

> From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche: "The Comanches sometimes ate raw meat, especially raw liver flavored with gall. They also drank the milk from the slashed udders of buffalo, deer, and elk. Among their delicacies was the curdled milk from the stomachs of suckling buffalo calves, and they also enjoyed buffalo tripe, or stomachs."

> This video includes footage of wild horses being rounded up and milked and the milk fermented and then consumed by Mongolians:
Nomadic life: Mongolian horse herders, BBC Human Planet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/human-planet-nomadic-life-mongolian-horse-herders/11958.html

> Interspecies nursing--wild animals sometimes adopt and suckle the offspring of other species, albeit rarely and usually the adopted species is domesticated:

"ONE SUMMER DAY on Sanibel Island, Florida, a female raccoon led her young out of a patch of woods toward a large dumpster parked behind a resort hotel. Following her were three healthy-looking young raccoons and, bringing up the rear, one tabby kitten. Ducking under a fence around the dumpster, this unorthodox family stuck together long after it had joined a couple dozen other cats and raccoons that were feeding on the bounty of edible garbage there. ...

And adoption is not just a quirk among human beings and the occasional eccentric raccoon. From gulls, geese and bats to seals, coyotes and dolphins, all kinds of creatures have been known to take in and raise another animal's young. According to Eva Jablonka, an evolutionary biologist at Tel-Aviv University who describes the behavior in the book Animal Traditions, adoption "is certainly more common than previously thought." She and her coauthor, zoologist Eytan Avital, report that several hundred bird and mammal species at least occasionally adopt. ...

Even more difficult to explain is why an animal--such as that Sanibel Island raccoon--would adopt the offspring of a different species. Boness and Brown both suggest that the raccoon may have taken in the kitten by mistake while her own babies were very young. In captivity, dogs with young puppies have been induced to suckle cats, and cats have nursed rats. Mothers in these experiments accepted the alien offspring before their own young were old enough to move around, the point at which powerful recognition systems usually kick in.

Still, it's hard to interpret such adoptions as anything other than reproductive bloopers. According to Jablonka, biologists understand very little about cross-species adoptions in the wild. "There are few reports of this behavior," she says, "and I suspect its occurrence is underestimated."

Sometimes, when the urge to nurture overwhelms, animal parents can end up in bizarre situations. In the mid-1970s, a biologist working in Alaska observed a pair of arctic loons, which had lost their own chicks, raising five spectacled eider ducklings that might otherwise have made a decent lunch. More recently, a lioness in Kenya's Samburu National Park took in a newborn Beisa oryx--normally a prey species--then attempted to adopt a second baby oryx after game wardens took away the first." (Sharon Levy, Parenting Paradox, NATIONAL WILDLIFE MAGAZINE, Aug/Sep 2002, https://notes.utk.edu/Bio/greenberg.nsf/0/841c6ff3a204c18e852572c200586258?OpenDocument)

> "I have witnessed adult bulls "robbing" milk from lactating cows in a mixed herd." - Laura, http://onibasu.com/archives/nn/70479.html

> Feral cats steal milk from northern elephant seals
by Juan Pablo Gallo-Reynoso and Charles Leo Ortiz, 2010, http://www.academia.edu/890943/Feral_cats_steal_milk_from_northern_elephant_seals
"We have found that feral cats are also drinking elephant seal’s milk, stealing it directly from the teats of nursing females. The amount of energy obtained this way might be significant for feral cats in the northern elephant seal rookeries on the island."

The chemical substances must be in organic, unprocessed natural form and have been available in the environment of our origins.

All that is true of raw milk from wild animals.

Plus, lots of folks here and elsewhere report good results from the best forms of dairy, with notable rare exceptions, such as yourself and Tyler. No doubt if Tyler were available, he would castigate us for doing so and insult us with straw man claims of noble savagery and such, but the evidence is sufficiently compelling to justify keeping an open mind about raw dairy. It's not a proven case, by any means, but the accumulating evidence is increasingly difficult to ignore.

Of course, to each his own and if dairy doesn't suit you, then don't eat it. Live and let live. For me, only butter, sheep cheese and sheep yogurt seem tolerable so far, which is much less than what other folks report tolerating or even thriving on. It pains me some to have to admit that the evidence is pointing to WAPF fanatics being more right than wrong about raw dairy.

[van]

to add to Bruno's experience...  Having had goats myself,, if you get to the barn before the herd wakes up, and can milk the mother before the kids suckle/feed in the morning, there's lots of milk.   Get two minutes too late and there's nothing to milk out.  My guess is that's what Bruno experienced.  If this is 'universally true,, paleo hunters would have to kill the mother at first light, or find a mother who's young had just previously died,, which can happen often. 

[Brad462]

I find that I enjoy drinking my own piss more than I enjoy drinking Raw Eggs.  Guess I am just a freak.

[raw-al]

The big difference is that eggs are easier to gather than milk!

Except that there would be no wild animals that would produce the ridiculous amount of eggs that a modern hen will produce and they would not be as large in size. Additionally the eggs would not likely be on the ground or in an easy to reach place.

[svrn]

The chemical substances must be in organic, unprocessed natural form

what a true statement. my raw dairy is currently in organic raw unprocessed form. My instincts re telling me to go drink some right now.

[raw-al]

Yes it was there, produced just in time by lactating females for their offspring exclusively. Only young ones drank milk, and only the milk of their mother – baring very rare exceptional cases. Every milk is species specific, its composition being expressly adapted to the offspring of that particular species and their specific needs. No adult could drink milk, either from a female of its own species nor from  a female of another species.

That sounds like the vegetarian rant about how we don't have a short intestine, no sharp incisors, yada yada, and just as intelligent.

I suppose we shouldn't eat the flesh of another animals, as it is not of our species. 

[HIT_it_RAW]

I suppose we shouldn't eat the flesh of another animals, as it is not of our species. 

That's what I thought to. Noble savages indeed! we should all be instinctive cannibals.

No worries friend I'll only eat you when my instincts tell me to

[PaleoPhil]

African ostrich eggs were both large and on the ground, and still are. They were and are also used for water storage (much less commonly today, of course).



Bushmen making an omelet with ostrich eggs
The bushman in this video says the ostrich egg = 24 chicken eggs.

[HIT_it_RAW]

Imagine sucking one of those out of the shell. Quite a meal.

[raw-al]

PP,

Nice vid thanks.

African ostrich eggs were both large and on the ground, and still are. They were and are also used for water storage (much less commonly today, of course).



Bushmen making an omelet with ostrich eggs
The bushman in this video says the ostrich egg = 24 chicken eggs.

Not a lot of them thar Ostrich eggs in these here hills.

[PaleoPhil]

Glad to be of service, Raw-Al. According to DNA research, all of today's humans have at least some DNA that traces back to African Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, and there is evidence that they not only ate ostrich eggs, but eventually started making canteens, water cache storage containers and jewelry out of them, which some still do today:
Making Beads Bushman Village Namibia
Ostrich eggs seem to be one of the single most useful items in human Paleo history. They were easy to obtain, contained plenty of food and were packed with nutrients. Plus, if they wanted to, the hunters could also kill the ostriches and eat them as well. I've tried ostrich meat and it's a very tasty red meat.

Ground-nest birds like the prairie chicken (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Prairie_Chicken) were reportedly quite plentiful in the USA prior to European colonization. Their eggs were so easy to obtain that gathering eggs was a task that supervised little children were given by Plains Indians. The prairie chicken was so important that a dance was modeled on the mating dance of the bird: Native American Indian Pow wow - Men Chicken Dancing


Greater prairie chicken nest with eggs

Ground-nesting birds are also indigenous to Eurasia, such as partridges:

Plus, ground-nest-making birds were far more plentiful during the Paleolithic than today. We can't judge Paleo times based on how things are now.

As Francois pointed out, there were also turtle eggs in Paleo days and let's not forget the eggs of other reptiles and fish.

[raw-al]

Nice Phil, thanks.

Initially when I lived in Northern Canada, I would see nothing when in the woods, while everyone else would see (sign) tracks, birds, animals, you name it. Then gradually, just like with those pictures that you stare at for awhile and suddenly you see a fish or an airplane etc.  I started seeing all kinds of things also. It's quite amazing.

I remember the locals saying that people would go to the fishing areas with very expensive rods and equipment, after travelling from half a continent away and sometimes catch nothing, while the local Indians would go out with a bit of string wrapped around a Coke can and catch huge fish in no time at all. It's not magic, just knowing.

[PaleoPhil]

I remember the locals saying that people would go to the fishing areas with very expensive rods and equipment, after travelling from half a continent away and sometimes catch nothing, while the local Indians would go out with a bit of string wrapped around a Coke can and catch huge fish in no time at all. It's not magic, just knowing.

Yup, that's my sort of approach and thinking too. I fish for easy-catching fish that I like the taste of, using just a cheapass fishing pole and worms or lures, often just dropping the line down, and with either just myself or a canoe or rowboat to take me to the fish. My favorite fish are yellow lake perch about 8-10 inches long. Smaller ones don't have much meat and bigger ones don't taste as good.

I tend to catch more fish than the guys with expensive bass boats who travel far, burn lots of fuel and are only looking to catch big bass and then throw them back. Come to think of it, in the past four years or so I think I've only seen them catch one or two fish., which they threw back. I saw a video documentary about Amazon Indians and one of said he couldn't understand why modern people fish, throw the fish back, and then drive to a supermarket and buy fish.

Gathering eggs used to be easy too, and even today isn't that hard in some parts. I saw a video once of Lakota children not long ago gathering prairie chicken eggs with their mother. They carried baskets, walked out a ways onto the prairie, picked up the eggs, filling their baskets in no time, and walked home.

[svrn]

so you eat lake caught fish? I heard this wasnt safe.