No scientific studies have shown benefits of raw food diets...

[Poncho]

I hope no one actually buys into this shit...

http://ansleyanimalclinic.com/newsletters/raw-meat-diets/


I didn't think it was up for discussion anymore whether or not carnivorous animals could eat raw meat......
Poor cats eh

Is science really that far behind or what?

[Dr. D]

I've been feeding my dogs raw and they have never been healthier or happier.

That site sources nothing, assuming the reader will take their word for it that corn is great for dogs. Other pro-raw sites state how wolves are carnivorous, ignoring any vegetation they can, as sighted by a world leading biologist.

 That article is crap and it saddens me that anyone could buy into that nonsense.

[Poncho]

I know, right.
And people do buy into it, even people I know.
People buy into everything though, I guess.

[Iguana]

At this time, there are no scientific studies showing any health benefits of raw meat diets.

Yeah, at least that statement is true : 100 % raw diets bring no benefit. They are the normal diet for all animals including humans, thus how something normal can be beneficial? 

If you car has a spark ignition engine, then gasoline is the normal fuel for it and no one ever claims gasoline is beneficial for spark ignited engines! On the contrary, diesel fuel is detrimental for these engines!

That's just the same for food: it's cooked food which is noxious! 

[Poncho]

People need to be taught.
Will the best raw paleo teacher please stand up?

The government doesnt even know.
Maybe the government is not the highest power on earth?
unless they blind themselves?

Every theory I follow eventually leads to a question mark.
My mind spends too much time trying to figure this out, often against my will haha

I first thought that the government was against their people, because they promote sickness.
But then I realized after watching many videos and such, that they are sick just as their people are. Their workers seem sicker and sicker as you follow them up the ladder.
You know, the higher-ranking the professional, the sicker they are.
What does it mean

[PaleoPhil]

Wolves eating berries!

Wolves eating strawberries!

Wolves eating grass!
"In many, if not all, regions, wolves are partial to plant as well as animal food. They willingly eat berries of mountain ash, lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), bilberries, blueberries and cowberry (in the forest zone), nightshade (Solanum nigrum), fruits of apple, pear and others (in the south). In summer, they readily visit melon fields, eat watermelon, muskmelons and frequently cause great damage, not only by eating the fruits, but many others are spoiled. They frequently eat various grain crops, and in the Pri-Ural steppes, the delicate and sweet shoots of reeds." (Heptner & Naumov, http://tinyurl.com/lprpf2t 1998, pp. 214-215)

"Apart from people, many forest animals are interested in cowberries: the bear is probably its most famous fan, but even hunters like wolves and pine martens like the berries as an accompaniment to their meat." http://www.luontoportti.com/suomi/en/kukkakasvit/cowberry

---

The lack of human-designed scientific studies of health benefits of raw meat is far from proof of anything. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Besides, not only Wolves and other wild canids but also all primates (including humans) and other animals, not only survived, but thrived while eating raw meat for millions of years and there are no vegetarian wild canids or primates (and they of course don't cook any of their food). That's some pretty good evidence.

[Dr. D]

Coyotes will eat our apples but they never digest. We always find undigested apples in coyote poop.

http://rawfed.com/myths/stomachcontents.html

and

http://rawfed.com/myths/omnivores.html

both explain this issue thoroughly with citations.

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for confirming that coyotes don't ignore all vegetation (nor do wolves or any other wild canids). I've also seen a coyote eating pears. It was even discovered recently that coyotes make mental maps of where the fruit trees in their territory are (just like hunter gatherers) and when the fruits will start dropping. Unfortunately, I didn't save the article.

The diet of the maned wolf is particularly interesting. It's diet is sometimes classified as omnivorous (although omnivory is a controversial and somewhat vague and confusing classification in the scientific community): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maned_wolf

[TylerDurden]

The ONLY reason there is very little info on raw food studies for humans  is that  scientists  are stupidly scared of being sued for any potential side-effects. Although there are studies done on raw milk consumption, however. that's at least a start.

Poncho, you seem to be looking for scientific validation of raw diets. It's simple:- look at the raw foodism web-page and the "Info  for Newbies" section of rawpaleoforum near the General Discussions forum and you will find plenty of info on the negative effects of health of cooked diets. Proving, scientifically,  that the opposite  is bad is just as good as proving that the same relevant thing is good.

[Poncho]

Thanks!

[Johan August]

Coyotes will eat our apples but they never digest. We always find undigested apples in coyote poop.

http://rawfed.com/myths/stomachcontents.html
 

http://rawfed.com/myths/omnivores.html

both explain this issue thoroughly with citations.

I have not noted any undigested apples in the poop of my dogs, nor any other vegetable matter. I do  not feed my two dogs anything cooked and only the occasional fruit. They do get salad to finish up from our left-overs pretty regularly but not instead of their meat and bone diet.
They are healthier than  my previous dogs who were mainly on a cooked diet.

[TylerDurden]

The notion that pets thrive on processed foods took a rather big hit a few years ago, because of the numerous Chinese-derived contaminated pet-food scandals. The trouble is that vets are indoctrinated during college with incentives from drug- and pet-food companies  so that they blindly recommend such rubbish.

[Poncho]

Domesticated animals and animals are really so different, its upsetting.
What have we done

I have seen on youtube a video of a cat that is given the choice between veggies and raw meat (the are laid out in front of the cat, one on either side) and the cat chooses the veggies.
Cats are obligate carnivores.

Trying to learn about nature through the habits of domesticated animals destroys my mind haha. I've come to the conclusion that I should just cut it out and accept that the animals we have in our homes are not actually the animals we took into our homes years and years ago.

[PaleoPhil]

Yeah, recent research found that domesticated dogs have developed more copies of amylase-producing chromosomes, suggesting that the human practice of feeding them starchy table scraps for thousands of years resulted in some genetic (and epigenetic) changes:

the Nature article is titled "The Genomic Signature of Dog Domestication Reveals Adaptation to a Starch-rich Diet".  Along with a variety of genetic changes that may impact brain development and function, they identified changes in three genes that play a key role in starch digestion and absorption.  One of these genes, AMY2B, encodes pancreatic amylase, an enzyme that digests starch into glucose in the small intestine.  Wolves only have two copies of AMY2B (one on each copy of chromosome 6), while domestic dogs carry 4-30 copies, suggesting that domestication has improved dogs' ability to digest starch.

This is fascinating because a similar genetic change occurred in humans.  Dogs only produce amylase in the pancreas, while primates such as humans express it in the saliva in addition to the pancreas. ... http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2013/01/dogs-eating-carbs.html

As Dr. Guyenet indicated, human populations that have been eating more starchy foods than others for thousands of years have also evolved more amylase chromosome copies.

[Dr. D]

Perhaps the adaptation to survive occurred, but certainly that can't prove optimal health. Just because humans can carry enzymes to digest sugar and milk fat doesn't mean we should use ice cream as our source of carbs and fat.

[PaleoPhil]

I agree with that, of course, and don't know of anyone who doesn't, though some (such as Danny Roddy, I think) advocate ice cream as one (not the only) source of carbs and fat.

[goodsamaritan]

Raw paleo should not be raw starch empty.
Raw starch is important.

[Poncho]

Not really sure about the whole 'the animals and us have evolved to eat this food, so we can and should obviously keep eating it now',
seems more like 'our domesticated animals and us have been getting sicker and sicker for so many hundreds of years that we dont even have the slightest idea of what 'healthy' looks like'

I don't eat starch, I guess maybe thats something I'm missing?
I hate living in such an unhealthy place
I wish I could just go to the store and trust that everything being sold to me wasn't poisonous,
and I wish I could walk down the street and be surrounded by the empty miserable hyper-consuming illness-ridden obese

[LePatron7]

I don't eat starch. I think it takes to much work to digest. The body has to break down all the linked up glucose molecules into single units before it can be absorbed.

But everyone seems to benefit with different things, so experiment.

[Poncho]

It seems that my digestion is so poor that raw meat is all I can handle.
Raw meat + veggies does well for me
Raw meat + fruit does well for me

Thats all

If I eat just fruit, bad deal.
Just veggies, bad deal.

Bit weird but I have tested it lots and it seems to be true, at least at this point in time

[goodsamaritan]

Your case was the same case as my in laws' driver who had pneumonia and was under my care for 10 days.

He could not digest raw fruits and raw veggies, I tried the first 2 days.

So I immediately shifted him to raw meat and raw sea food and that worked beautifully.

[Dr. D]

I have trouble finding good starches that can be consumed raw with few antinutrients. I'm not about to grab a potato. There is a market I'm going to today that I've never been to before so my hopes are high.

[PaleoPhil]

Not really sure about the whole 'the animals and us have evolved to eat this food, so we can and should obviously keep eating it now'

Amen, that's a valid concern, Poncho. If you're referring to Dr. Guyenet's article, you'll find that he doesn't make that assumption and researches things way more than most folks, partly because it's part of his job to do so, and he tests things out on himself as well.

seems more like 'our domesticated animals and us have been getting sicker and sicker for so many hundreds of years

Yup, and Guyenet has written extensively about it.

I don't eat starch, I guess maybe thats something I'm missing?

Only you can determine that for yourself. It's theoretically possible. I try not to push things on people. I believe in live and let live and each to their own. One love. :-) Good luck in whatever you do!

I've been experimenting with starchy foods myself, mainly with raw (super-ripe) plantains, which happen to be one of the foods highest in resistant starch (RS). I posted about raw plantains in another thread. I've been eating them for some months, but only about one or two every couple weeks or so. One difficulty is that the ones available to me take weeks to ripen properly, and one never did (wish I had thought to dehydrate it instead of throwing it out). For some time I've been meaning to amp up the experiment. So far it's been too puny to make a noticeable impact either positively or negatively. I'm finally getting into it more.

One of the interesting things about RS is that it's highest in RAW foods. So if it turns out that it really is beneficial, then that will be a major evidence in support of raw foods. Hoorah!

Recently I've noticed that more and more LC Paleo folks have been adding foods high in starch, especially RS, to their diets and reporting good results. It fits with the evidence of Stone Age (and earlier) consumption of underground storage organs by both humans and earlier primate ancestors, the observational evidence finding that most traditional societies consume at least some starchy foods (even the Eskimos traditionally ate Eskimo potatoes and/or the animal-starch-rich livers of seals, caribou, loche fish, etc.), as well as the experiential reports of more and more folks on the Internet. So the evidence on all fronts is currently looking favorable for non-grain starchy foods like plantains and underground storage organs.

It's reportedly mainly our colonic bacteria that digest starch, rather than our stomachs, and the interesting thing about RS is that it's supposed to feed those bacteria, promoting them so that you have more of them to enable you to eat still more starch, and even heal the gut! I'm hoping for some of that. We'll see.

Nowadays, most of the globe is an unhealthy place. On the bright side, my local farmers' markets have been growing and improving. They still have lightyears to go before they approach the quality of GS' farmers' market in the Phillippines, but at least they're getting better.

Raw meat + fruit does well for me

If you're able to digest all fruit fairly well, Poncho, you're doing better than me. I only handle certain fruits well and most starchy foods not well. I don't assume that this means that humans aren't meant to eat fruits or starchy foods. Instead, I suspect it means that I have work to do on my gut and gut bacteria.

I don't handle potatoes and other nightshades well, but it occurred to me that I might handle pure potato starch better. While looking for info on it, I discovered that lots of Paleos had the same idea and have been consuming raw plantains and/or unmodified potato starch and reporting good results.

I have trouble finding good starches that can be consumed raw with few antinutrients. I'm not about to grab a potato. There is a market I'm going to today that I've never been to before so my hopes are high.

I love your curiosity, Dr. D! I wouldn't dream of telling anyone what to do, but I'm expanding my starch experiment beyond super-ripe raw plantains to include raw dried green plantains and unmodified potato starch.

Beware, though. A starch experiment can be taken too far. Dr. McDougall's hand-picked "success-story" clients look like hell at http://www.youtube.com/user/drmcdougallmd It's laughable that anyone would pick these people as exemplars.
Mark Sisson spent some time at a McDougall retreat and it sounded like McDougall's other clients are doing even worse. That said, McDougall is nearly-right about some things, such as the near-universality of starchy foods in diets of peoples across the globe (of course, he fails to mention that meat is even more universal).

[jesterhead]

I first thought that the government was against their people, because they promote sickness.
But then I realized after watching many videos and such, that they are sick just as their people are.

It's all about politics.

I doubt raw meat will ever be researched at an academic institution let alone studies published in an academic journal. After learning about the peer review process, I learned to read everything with a critical eye.

From what I have gathered most clinical research (and a lot of bench research related to health) is done at medical and dental schools, in the US. These schools are funded by the government, AMA, ADA, and pharmaceutical industry. They do a ton of good interesting research, but throw out nutrition and replace with pharmacology. You all know this, I'm just saying the dogma is molecular science and germ theory and not nutrition/prevention. Half the time I feel like the "culture" of physicians and most researchers is so ingrained in their ways of thinking they don't even realize this/seek alternatives (I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories). The politics come in with getting funding/grants, trying to research a topic that is outside the accepted dogma, etc. Also, pharmaceutical and biotech companies make heavy investments to control what information is taught in medical, dental, and graduate schools. I think most just believe the information shoved down their throats from the start of their education, and don't think outside the box or question their knowledge. For example, a physician was telling my grandmother about a new arthritis drug and how the patients were starting to regain some mobility in their hands. *starry eyes* Um, how about bone broth and other nutrition.

When I was a teenager and read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration I could not understand why doctors and researchers did not pick up on this instantaneously. After getting my education, boy do I understand.

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is sold on amazon.com, etc.
- It's a detailed anthropology and nutritional work written by a dentist.
- It can even be considered a work on epigenetics, way ahead of its time (before the field of epigenetics even existed).
- It could very well be published by an academic publisher (too long for a journal) and in university libraries.
- But it's not.

The last chapter of the book The Body Electric by Robert Becker sums it all up quite nicely. The chapters title, Postscript: Political Science.

[RogueFarmer]

Pottenger's cats. http://www.amazon.com/Pottengers-Cats-A-Study-Nutrition/dp/0916764060


Here is another idiotic article that shows that it would take 8 hours of eating raw food a day to feed our brains.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/raw-food-big-brains/

Can't there be a debunking of this notion very easily?

I can eat two pints of raw ice cream in ten minutes. if I eat four pints then that is almost 4000 calories. Game set match no?

Ok ok, so that doesn't include the milking and manufacture of the ice cream.

But you guys were talking bad about ice cream. What's so bad about ice cream? It's delicious. I use 1 tablespoon of honey per pint and three raw duck eggs. Where's the beef? What for?

I don't allow it to freeze all the way because the consistency is best before it freezes solid.