Since we're talking about nightshades now, would there be a benefit in getting rid of most of it but keeping, say, a little chile powder here and there?

You're right, I was lumping all spicy things together. Sorry about that.

I think that's probably ok. If I remember correctly, problems with nightshades are not usually immune reactions, so a low enough dose should be safe. Experiment and you'll find out.

But back to raw food, I just had some carpaccio for dessert:

4 or 5 very thin slices of almost-frozen beef roast
1 Tbsp taramosalata (salted carp roe, lemon juice, olive oil)
Leaves from 2 sprigs of cilantro
1 raw duck egg yolk

We got the duck eggs this weekend from a friend who knows a poultry farmer. It made a beautiful presentation sitting on top of the meat. Very large and very bright orange. And every ingredient was raw!

evidence of human fire use goes back 1.5 million years

Just a question for all the raw meat-eaters here....do you just go down to the local grocery store and get your meat there? I think I could try raw meat myself, but only if it came from somewhere more reliable...but maybe I'm just being too picky?

I have a butcher that I know very well - we're on a first name basis. He runs a shop at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market. Most of his meat is not organic or grass-fed, but it is good quality, and I think he does good work. I also buy a little bit of grass-fed meat at the local farmer's market - that's where I get my liver, which I eat both raw and cooked rare.

I don't worry too much about "clean" meat, since I think eating a mostly-meat diet strengthens the immune system. I'd rather have food poisioning occasionally than have the flu frequently. However, I do freeze most of the meat we get; our deep freezer is very cold. Freezing kills most parasites - if you freeze for 14 days it should kill them all. It won't kill bacteria, though.

If you're paranoid, but want to try beef carpaccio or tartare, just buy a roast and carve off the outer surface meat (as the surface area is where most of the nasties will accumulate), if you want to go with the belt and suspenders, then sear the outside first, to reduce the possibility of contaminating the inside meat bacteria.

It's funny all this talk about Paleo vs Raw and no one has chimed in with any Aajonus Vonderplanitz stuff yet

Go ahead, Frankly. He's the "high meat" guy, right? Since I've started reading about charcuterie, it seems like modern meat cures don't actually involve much fermentation. But I think Vonderplanitz talks about it. What does he say, and what do you think of it?

Okay, I'm still curious about how he makes high meat, but this guy is from another dimension...

http://www.beyondveg.com/nieft-k/rv...t-to-live.shtml

I remember seeing the "high meat" thing on the episode of "wife swap" with some of his "followers". I was curious about it as well, it almost seemed as though it had been innoculated with some sort of mold or fungus. Anyway, Aajonus comes up a few times around here - I recall Blackjack talking about him in regards to raw milk/meat/honey... this thread covers him a bit: click for link a quick google of "high meat" led me to this: click for link to external site - I'll be interested in reading about it, if you're brave enough to try "Lastly, high-meat will always smell really bad - which is why you're meant to leave it in a sealed vacuum-jar in a fridge rather than open to the air. I always air the meat once a day, for a minute or so, to speed things up, and then I eat it after two to four weeks(on a lowish setting in the fridge). At this stage, it becomes very slimy on the surface of the meat,and has the best effect. After c. 4 weeks or more, it becomes pretty much a liquid soup, at which point I'm unable to swallow the stuff as the smell and taste are just too overpowering."

That sounds rather disappointing.

I'm not interested in anything you have to "bolt down" - it should taste good, even if it's an acquired taste like stinky cheese. Kimchi, for example, can include meat at the "liquid soup" stage, but it's not difficult to swallow. Fish sauce is essentially "high fish" at that stage. Some people think fish sauce smells bad, but I have no problem with it.

Stefansson refers to "high pheasant" when he compares Eskimo practices with British ones. I thought the term came from the British practice of hanging pheasant until the feathers fall out. I get the impression that "high meat" followers are more interested in what's exotic and new than in what's traditional.

Pheasant was hung in the open air, not sealed in airtight containers. Modern "stink fish" has been giving people botulism because they're using airtight plastic containers. Many harmful organisms that grow on food are fungal, and grow aerobically. C. Botulinum, on the other hand, is anaerobic, so it thrives in sealed containers. Kimchi can be made safely in sealed containers because it's too acidic for C. botulinum. These modern practitioners are either ignorant of tradition, or they're using acid/microbial starters that prevent botulism.

Virtually no raw foodists eat a lot of grains or legumes or tubers. What few grains and legumes they eat are invariably sprouted, at which point they are a young plant as much as a seed.

Never heard of a raw foodist who ate raw tubers since they are extremely unpalatable raw.

Most raw foodists are raw vegan and their diet consists pretty much exclusively of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Raw food cuisine can be very elaborate or very simple. But usually involves a lot of blending and dehydrating.

There is a huge amount of disinformation floating around about the raw food movement and a lot of it gets repeated on this forum. Humans and human ancestors may have cooked their food for many many thousands of years but they ate all their food raw for vastly more thousands longer.

Do a simple google search on raw food diet and start following the links if you are interested in learning more.

Here's the first list I found on Google. Plenty of grains and legumes in their list...

I love the well researched numbers you have supplied

Man has been cooking meat for up to 1.9 million years. This is vastly longer than it requires to adapt to the dietary change of eating cooked meat. How long man ate raw food prior to this time is inconsequential and has little to no relevance to how our bodies work today. If we are just talking about homo sapiens, then this covers all of the time that homo sapiens has even existed.

I can't understand why anyone would think they know better than the last 100,000 generations of people and eat raw or vegetarian .

I wonder how many raw foodists that are eating just fruits and greens and reporting feeling great are just detoxing from grains, soy, and dairy. Most are former vegetarians and most vegetarians eat those as their big three.

Some eat grains and legumes (used to be one...so I met my share), but not in any quantity rivaling vegetarians or normal vegans.