QuestionI've recently determined that an instinctively-guided, all-natural (and thus all raw) diet still makes the most sense for humans. I tried a a raw piece of hormone/antibiotic free pasture-fed beef and found the smell to be slightly repelling and the taste bland and definitely unattractive. I returned to it several times each day for the next few days and never found it palatable. I am convinced that we arent meant to force ourselves to eat anything (or have to season or mix up foods to change their taste, essentially tricking our senses). I read that in fact it was non-muscle tissue that humans ate the most of and by far preffered, but I'm quite at a loss as to how to get started with an organic organ meat diet. Will butcher shops or meat companies have them? Will I have to go to individual farmers- if so how do I find them?
I feel like i can't get started on a trully healthy diet soon enough and would greatly appreciate your help. (I live in California, United States)
Thanks
Chris
AnswerHello Chris,
Well,I'm very much in favour of your dietary approach, especially since it very closely mirrors my own!
When I first started my 100% Raw Palaeolithic Diet I had awful trouble finding lean muscle-meats palatable, just like in your case - I had to douse them with garlic for taste and my then-weakened teeth couldn't handle them, unless they were minced. I then read up various dull, but reliable scientific articles, as well as the Vilhjalmur Stefansson diet article, all of which pointed out that humans in the past ate mainly raw organ-meats for health(ie brain/bone-marrow/liver/kidney/tongue/heart/adrenal and other glands), and hardly ever touched any muscle-meats except to leave a small amount of them to hang and soften before finally eating them a long time later. Indeed, eating mainly lean muscle-meats with not enough fat to process the protein, often leads to unpleasant consequences such as rabbit starvation.
I am wholly in agreement with you as regards avoiding using mustard/galic etc. to flavour raw foods. It's not natural and was a method that cooked-food eaters in the past used to disguise the lack of flavour/taste of cooked foods. Sauces etc. are definitely not needed in the case of raw organ-meats which are much richer in taste than muscle-meats,anyway,, especially the ones from wild animals. The other bonus is that you don't have to waste time cooking, you just eat everything in 5 minutes flat, and eating only one food at a time is much easier on the stomach. I get so amused these days at how many Primal Dieters spend hours every day preparing veggie juice or coconut cream or mixing 10 different foods together in a blender. It's such a ridiculous waste of time.
Here's a tip:- At some stage, no matter what you do, you'll start finding even the raw organ-meats you like not as appealing as before; this often if you eat more than a certain large amount of food each day.This is when you should start fasting for a day or so. After a day or two, you should find that your sense of taste has returned.This habit fits in with the Palaeolithic "feast and famine" way of eating.Our bodies need a rest from time to time and constant digestion squanders the body's resources and energy over time, so this change of taste is just an instinctive reaction on the part of the body.
Regarding organ-meats I'd recommend you go mainly after liver,kidney,tongue and heart. The other organ-meats are an acquired taste and usually less liked by others. Bone-marrow is the most delicious(it was highly prized by hunter-gatherers) but it has to be absolutely fresh. When fresh, bone-marrow tastes like raw butter, when left for a few days it starts tasting like dry sawdust. In all cases, buy your organ-meats from wild sources or organic sources if the former isn't possible. I would also strongly recommend that you also eat high-fat muscle-meats such as many shellfish/fish, or even duck. They are not as nutrient-dense as organ-meats but are just as tasty and are high enough in fat content for it not to matter, and you are highly unlikely to get a reliable weekly supply of organ-meats, so it's best that you have an alternative supply if an order fails to come through.
I sympathise with your difficulty in finding raw organ-meats, as I was in much the same predicament here in London. It took me a good 6-8 months to find reliable sources of food. You're luckier than me, as you live in California which is a haven for raw palaeolithic dieters. First off, I'd like to recommend NorthStar Bison( http://www.northstarbison.com/ ) as they deliver bison by post. They have occasionally been known to be somewhat unreliable, though.One person mentioned having a couple of orders booked 2 weeks in advance suddenly canceled just before the delivery date. Bear in mind that they automatically freeze the meat before delivery, unless you specifically tell them not to, in which case they send it in a cooler with dry ice.
Living 1000s of kms away from California, I can't help you with specific addresses of businesses. All I have is this website ( http://www.naturalhub.com/buy_natural_food_in_usa.htm#BUY%20MEAT%20MAIL%20&%20CO... ). You'll have to ask each company if they can deliver unfrozen meat like with NorthStar Bison. My own experience re food sources, is that most normal butchers are useless as regards organ-meats as organ-meats are not much in demand. You might find an organic butcher which might be OK(Organic butchers in the UK are usually horrendously expensive, but since US food is generally 1/2 the cost of that in the UK, the ones in the US might well be worth paying a visit).
An American woman imported the idea of (mostly organic)farmers' markets into the UK in 1997. Without them I would never have been able to follow this diet cheaply. If you can find any organic farmers' markets in your area, then that's great. I presume that there is a US equivalent association of organic farmers' markets for California - there must be a website. They should be able to e-mail you a list of organic farmers and markets. Try and make sure that whichever market stall you go to, has the farmer selling his own food or a representative of his. Buying wholesale is never a good idea.
If you're lucky, you may even find a farmer who hunts in his spare time, in which case you can get deer innards which are delicious -I'm even able to get wild hare and wild boar on occasion.
Whether or not that helps, I suggest that you join a Yahoo! Group focusing on raw palaeolithic diets. There are several, at least 12, maybe 25. The largest is the live-foods group which caters to anyone who eats a raw-meat diet( health.groups.yahoo.com/group/live-food/ ). These groups are invaluable for finding raw food sources in your local area. You'll still have to spend many,many Saturdays looking around for different sources of raw foods, though. Depending on one sole supply is not a good idea, not just because of lack of variety, but because there are always certain times of the year when most farms are shut down(at Christmas etc.).
Lastly, I don't entirely agree with the Instincto/instinctive approach. I will admit that after eating raw food for the first 6 months on this diet that I found that I increasingly, instinctively disliked the taste of most processed foods(in the first year I ate 95% raw, not 100%). However the Instincto approach does not take into account that certain raw foods are not necessarily good for most people, even if they do taste great. For example, I tried Aajonus Vonderplanitz's Primal diet for the first 6 months which includes mainly lean muscle-meat and after 1-2 months, raw dairy as well. I absolutely loved the taste of raw dairy, so much so that I became addicted to it - I even found that I lost my appetite for the raw organ-meats I introduced into my diet after a while. My CFS symptoms which had abated very slightly with the introduction of the raw muscle-meats, suddenly reappeared with a vengeance , with the introduction of the raw dairy, and I developed constant diarrhea, severe stomach-aches and constant lethargy as well as blurry vision.I realised after a while that I have had severe lactose intolerance all my life and cut out all dairy and lean muscle-meats and switched to organ-meats and small amounts of fatty muscle-meats - the majority of my previous health-problems pre-raw diet duly disappeared over 3-4 months. Turns out that there are a lot of people who have similiar food intolerances to 1 or 2 raw foods(perhaps due to a reaction against the cooked version of the food?). Raw dairy is the prime offender, but a tiny number of other people have problems with raw eggs.(What really bothers me about all this is that when I mentioned my 5-month raw dairy ordeal to Aajonus, he flippantly dismissed it as just a detox!)
I realise that the above example of raw dairy is probably not a good choice since Instincto dieters wisely ban raw dairy due to it being a non-Palaeolithic nonnatural food. But they do advocate eating whatever feels tasty, which isn't always wise. I did try Instincto for a short while just before the Primal Diet, and I found that if I ate more than 10% of my diet in the form of fruit, veg, or honey, that I became increasingly listless and fatigued and often developed slight diarrhea-even worse my appetite for raw animal foods diminished. The trouble is that I love the taste of raw fruit and raw heather honeycomb, as snacks between meat meals, but I am all too well aware from past experience, that I thrive far better on a 90%+ high-fat raw animal foods diet, so I rely on my tastes and instinct only as regards raw organ-meats.
Hope This Helps!
Geoff Purcell
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