raw meat and cancer

Question
QUESTION: hi.i have a book 'the live food factor' by s.schenck.advocating raw vegan. to back her views, she quotes from another book ' genefit nutrition '.... " devido and spors, the authors of genefit..observed fast growing tumors in people who ate excessive amonts of raw meat... they attribute this to the accumulation of undigested foreign proteins that create mutations, boosting the production of cancer cells, mammalian proteins being worst because they are closest to our own proteins, thus the immune system does not recognise them as foreign and might allow them to accumulate freely in the body'.  hmm?  this is particularly worrying for me as i have been diagnosed with a brain tumor. i thought tumors liked glucose, hence my  ( semi cooked meat and veg diet). would really appreciate help on this. i have researched as much as i know how. thankyou. annette

ANSWER: It's pure nonsense. I just googled for "devido spors genefit" and checked under "raw meat cancer" in pubmed, the main scientific database of studies, and found no mention thereof. Plus, Lex Rooker and other raw, zero-carbers have pointed to scientific claims that ketogenic(0 carb) diets may lead to lower cancer-risk as tumour cells are not as efficient at processing ketone bodies for energy. Plus, many raw foodists have pointed out that they recovered from cancer only after following a diet high in raw animal foods.

Also, Susan Schenk herself has admitted that she needed to eat some raw animal foods in order to stay healthy, in the end:-

http://www.myhealthblog.org/2010/09/13/raw-diet-guru-susan-schenck-now-eats-raw-



Re your semi-cooked diet:- I should warn you that it is well-known in scientific circles that eating cooked, processed foods of any kind leads to an increase in the rate of cancer. You would be far better off going all-raw:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foo

There's plenty more such stuff online on heat-created toxins such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons etc.  and their link to increased cancer rates. Vegans will claim that there are studies showing that meat-consumption leads to cancer, but absolutely all such studies focus on the consumption of cooked and processed meats, never raw meats. I have come across 1 or 2 studies on the consumption of raw dairy, but never a raw-meat study. Another reason to disbelieve the absurd notions re fast-growing tumours in raw-meat-eating people.

HTH,
RPG.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thankyou for such a thorough answer and for the links. I am quite well versed in nutrition, it has been my passion for over 20 years, but it is an evolving and often contradictory subject. I came to the conclusion, a few years ago, that mans natural diet should be raw. However i got caught up in the raw vegan ethos for a short time. It was only a short time because i believe that to back up what anyone thinks is true they have to be able to argue against the opposite of their beliefs, hence i began researching paleo nutrition. Both made sense! I have since been eating fruit, veg ( raw in smoothies otherwised steamed lightly) nuts and small amounts of meat boiled for 1 minute, to take the ' rawness' off. Since i have been diagnosed with a tumor it actually could be benign( awaiting an MRI scan) i cut out the fruit. sorry for going on!! just nice to ' talk' to someone. o.k i need raw meat. i can get fresh ' mass produced' meat daily. or i can get grass fed lamb/beef but i will have to freeze it. I know freezing denatures fats and protein,but i still think this option would be best. What do you think? As for susan schenk... haha! again, sorry for telling you my life story!

Answer
Freezing, IMO, isn't really necessary. I suppose you plan on buying it in bulk, because you can't get it easily neear you? If so, you may have no choice. Still, some RVAFers buy it in 1- or 2-week lots and get it delivered to their door direct from the grassfed meat farm, and just store the raw meats in the fridge, not the freezer.

Whatever the case, get the grassfed raw meats. The mass-produced raw(grainfed) meats often cause problems or just block healing/recovery in many cases. Freezing only causes minor damage to raw meats, really. The main thing is not to store the frozen meats for more than a few weeks before eating them, and to eat them soon after they are fully thawed for various reasons. Don't eat part of a thawed raw meat chunk and then store it in the freezer again, for example, as freezing ruptures the cell-membranes, resulting in nutrient-loss at a faster rate when it starts thawing.

HTH,
RPG.

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