Questionis there any benefits from eating my steaks rare as well as eating raw dishes like steak tartar on a semi-regular basis? or am i in some kind of danger from eating a 'mixed diet' of cooked and raw? i love rare steaks and raw on occassion,but just not ready to go all raw exclusivly just yet.Since i do eat cooked as well as rare/raw would it cause the naturally occuring parasites to overpopulate and cause health problems as opposed to just going all raw?
thanks
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i am fearfull of parasites and tapeworms,there is sooo much conflicting information out there i don't know what i believe! i don't eat an all raw diet,but i do enjoy my share of rare steaks and sometimes raw meats- but i have only recently began worrying about parasites/worms.
is there any truth to my paranoia?
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Vitually none. Most organic-raised animals are regularly given deworming medicine, anyway. Wild meat is, in theory, supposed to have a lot of parasites in it, according to so-called "experts" but, I and many other RPDers who eat a lot of wild meat haven't noticed a thing, and I've been eating wild meat for years.There may well be parasites (or rather "symbionts") in the food, but the fact that health-problems, related to that, are so very rare, indicates that there is not much truth to the pleomorphism theory. The guru, Aajonus Vonderplanitz's take on this is that so-called "parasites" are really symbionts which help to clean up dead, toxic matter within the body, and that since cooked-food-eaters have more toxic material in the body, they are more likely to suffer from side-effects.
That said, I have come across just two references to parasites among RPDers. These two incidents occurred after the two had been to the tropics, where food can be more easily contaminated. In both cases, the bouts were minor and very temporary,compared to what cooked-food-eaters usually experience.
Last I checked, even the stools of people who eat a lot of cooked-food are full of various unicellular or multicellular parasites, as they exist everywhere in our environment. What rawpalaeodieters find out in the end is that all the things such as bacteria/parasites etc. that they were taught to be afraid of, do in fact contribute to human health. Ultimately the only way one can discover for oneself that that is fact, is to eat raw-meat for long enough, so as to see the results.
If you want further confirmation, you can always ask the raw, paleolithic diet groups on Yahoo and elsewhere. I will admit that, initially, I too was scared of parasites and went in for all sorts of deworming herbal remedies such as wormwood, but I quickly realised there was no danger, so I stopped using such supplements, and have never had cause to regret my decision.
RPG
AnswerI don't think you really need to worry about parasites, even with a mixed diet. Almost all our environment, including our food, is made so hygienically clean, these days, that there's no danger.
That said, I don't think that a mixed cooked/raw diet will do you much good, especially if you're in very bad health. As long as you're eating cooked-food , your body will be too frequently swamped by toxins from the cooked-food to be able to properly detox.
I would certainly admit that eating rare meats is better than eating cooked-meats, so if you're relatively healthy with only minor illnesses, it might be an option, though it's a slow path to better health.
I would say that it's perfectly OK to do a mixed cooked/raw diet when you're starting a rawpalaeo diet, so as to get used to it all. I presume that you're not just concerned about the parasite issue but because of the taste. The best way to get used to it is to start out with all your meat cooked at whatever temperature is most comfortable for you, with as many processed sauces as you like, and then to gradually reduce the cooking-temperature by a degree centigrade/fahrenheit every so often, as you get used to each stage, as well as reducing the amounts of sauces - until you eventually reach the stage where you can easily handle eating raw meat at room-temperature without any sauces(though you can add raw sauces, if you want).
I've found, along with many others, that my former initial negative reaction to some raw meats, right at the start of the diet, was primarily due to former habits and social conditioning. So if you eat raw food for a time, you start to like it, and eventually far prefer it to any cooked-food. (A good way to get used to eating raw is to eat sashimi(raw fish) at a Japanese restaurant, as being able to eat raw food in a social setting is a good form of encouragement . Make sure the restaurant is authentically Japanese, as the less authentic restaurants will give you farmed fish, which is no good.Also, some of the more expensive Japanese restaurants may fob you off with tiny, nouvelle-cuisine-like dishes, which is a waste of money.
Lastly, I ought to mention that it's quite common for people to start to experience detox symptoms after eating any cooked-food, when they've been on a mostly-raw diet for some time.
RPG
(Just one thing, I don't mind long posts, but I would ask you only to use the follow-up question option, if the previous answer and question is very short. Please just ask another question entirely via the usual method, otherwise).
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