QuestionQUESTION: Geoff,
If we eat a piece of raw steak that has some cartilage, does the cartilage get digested or just go thru us? Also, do you agree with Aajonus' idea that raw meat doesn't have to be chewed well like cooked food and that perhaps it's even better not to chew it fully? Thanks, Alan
ANSWER: I can safely state that the cartilage does get digested as well. No specific study that I can cite, though, just past experience! Not everything gets digested all the time by everybody, though. In my own case, for some strange reason, I developed a strange ability to excrete bright yellow liquid diarrhea soon after eating any raw suet, implying poor absorption by my body for some reason. No idea why, but I would suspect that individuals can vary, even on a raw diet.
I do agree with Aajonus' view re bolting. Most of us rawpalaeodieters like me anyway bolt our raw meats down with minimal chewing(just chewing once, maybe twice at most, generally). Carnivores tend to just bolt their foods down with minimal chewing so this is understandable. Cooked foods require more surface-area for enzymes in the body to act on them and fully digest them, so it would be wiser for people on cooked-food-diets to chew a lot before swallowing.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: So does that mean that for rawpaleodieters eating cartilage (and perhaps marrow added too) takes the place of gelatinous bone stock that regular paleos and particularly westonaprice folks emphasize so much? Do you purposefully try to eat enough cartilage, and in what form? Do raw paleos who only eat organs and muscle with no cartilage run into problems? Thanks once again! Alan
AnswerI do not consider bone-stock to be necessary as anything one needs from an animal can be gotten in raw form. Anything that has to be cooked beforehand should be thrown away without worrying. I and many others have eaten raw organs and muscle-meats for years, without ever incurring issues. Raw marrow is, imho, the healthiest raw animal fat. As regards raw cartilage, I do not go out of my way to eat it, in fact I usually avoid it.
HTH,
RPG.
- Prev:pain in shoulder
- Next:Dairy (whey) insulin?