safe to eat raw meat?

Question
I"m looking for more info about eating raw meat. Which meats are best eaten raw and isn't it dangerous to eat raw meat?
Also, what must you be aware of when changing your diet to include raw meat? Thanks!

Answer
Generally speaking, raw meats are not dangerous. That is, if raw meats are from healthy, grassfed animals. If raw meats come from unhealthy, intensively-farmed grainfed animals, then they are not very likely to be as healthy, even though they do not contain the additional heat-created toxins produced by cooking. Raw-foodists routinely recommend against raw, grainfed meats for that reason, although I have heard 1 or 2 RVAFers claim they did fine even on raw, grainfed meats.


Basically, the highest quality raw meats come from raw wild game and raw wildcaught seafood. Then come the 100 percent raw, grassfed/organic meats; followed, lastly and worstly,  by intensively-farmed raw grainfed meats, which usually come from animals given lots of unhealthy antibiotics, vaccines etc etc. Grainfed animals are also far more prone to BSE and other diseases, as the immune-systems of such animals are compromised by their unhealthy grain-filled diets.

The threads linked here are well worth reading for someone new to RVAF diets:-

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/important-info-for-newbies/

One of the first things RVAFers notice, once they've been eating raw meats for a few months, is that the whole food-poisoning  scare re raw meats is a load of rubbish.


The only minor catch with RVAF diets is that one usually finds that one needs to detox in the early stage of the diet, as the body finally is able to get rid of the heat-created toxins taken into the body over decades of eating cooked foods. Some people find they have no overt detox symptoms as such, while others may find that they have an initial 2-3 week period of minor detoxes involving constipation or diarrhea or some other minor symptom, and then have  occasional detoxes in the first few years before they eventually stop.


To take me as an example:- the 1st 2-3 days after I switched suddenly to 100 percent RVAF diet, I had green diarrhea, necessitating me to go to the bathroom every half hour, at sudden notice. After that, I would have a minor detox every 2 to 4 months, lasting from 2 to 7 days, involving usually 1 or 2 mild flu-like symptoms-often I had a slightly hot forehead, mild fatigue and a runny nose). These detoxes decreased in terms of severity, duration, and frequency until they eventually stopped completely after 2.5 years.

Much older people(60s+) usually have bodies which have deteriorated quite a lot from decades of eating cooked foods, so their detoxes will very likely be more severe than those who go raw at a much younger age. Such people would be better advised to start with eating just partially-raw diets to prevent a sudden detox, and then slowly increasing the percentage of raw animal foods over time.

HTH,
RPG.  

1. Prev:Primal Diet
2. Next:type 1 diabetes