Dear Kirt,
Some time ago I sent you this mail. Did you get it ? I wonder, because there was no reply from you. If you have any comments, I'll be glad.
Kind regards,
François
Comments on : An Ex-Instincto's Guide to Instinctive Eating
Reading you on the web was great and very enjoyable. Congratulations for your style, it is very funny! It seems to me that your article will appear objective to most people - I don't say that it is, since perfect objectivity is a hard to achieve ideal to which I don't pretend myself.
Don't worry: even thought I have been "officially indoctrinated" (!), I didn't get any mental anguish after reading you. Since January 1987, I've been practising instinctive nutrition and I've not eaten any cooked food from February of the same year on. Nevertheless, I can't say that I do it 100% : sometimes I drink wine. And if we consider the fact that much of our food is not really original, as you rightly point out, 100% pure instincto is almost impossible.
Furthermore, I buy Australian horsemeat and New-Zealand lamb as well as meat from Orkos and I'm not sure that some of those animals haven't been fed grain or/and processed food.
If G.C Burger and Bruno Comby are a bit too optimistic about the healing power of our organisms once the intake of Neolithic cooked food has been abandoned, it seems to me that you are too pessimistic about it. It looks like their goal is selling Burger's theory and that yours is to appear objective...
Now, since here in Europe we are more and more attacked and considered as a sect of indoctrinated fanatics led by "Burger the Guru", it may be good for us that you, as well as many other guys eating instinctively, somehow criticise the theory while explaining it. Some of your critics are all right. But there are some that I consider baseless, and I'll try to explain you why while correcting also some mistakes:
1. Burger is not French but Swiss.
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2. I doubt he didn't have any heather system in his farm, since the thermometer may sometimes go down to minus 15°C here in winter.
3. He doesn't say that cooking has been used only for 10000 years, but he understands that large scale cooking could only take place once we manufactured pottery, in the Neolithic. Before, foodstuffs could only be grilled, and Burger writes and also told us he supposes we started to experiment this quite soon since we mastered the fire, 350000 to 500000 years ago.
4. He states that practising a perfect raw instinctive nutrition is impossible in our civilised world and that we can only try to approach this ideal, without ever reaching it. He totally agrees with you on this point as well as on the former one, so it'd be fair to give it to him.
5. Fermenting is an original process, which occurs naturally in overripe fruits and is by no means a method of denaturing food. As a matter of fact, some animals as well as most instinctos are very fond of partially fermented fruits. Never tried it ?
6. Burger doesn't pretend that every cooked food is toxic. What he says is : we have no proof that it is not noxious and that any instinctive stop with it occurs when the proper amount has been eaten - by the way, he also agrees that the same problem happens with modern artificially selected fruits & meat. He suspects that cooked food (or at least some cooked food) is, along with milk and cereals, the cause of many health problems and since we ignore exactly which foodstuffs, if not all processed ones, are responsible of these problems, it is safer to avoid them all and eat as much as possible only raw original food. He told us almost exactly what you say about a contingent minimum adaptation to some processed food, probably for some folks at least.
( Till now I read only some parts of Jean-Louis Tu article on this site, and I'm unable to argue with it since my knowledge of biochemistry is limited. Nevertheless I doubt very much that our analytic science is able to observe and predict the molecular outcome of all biochemistry events happening with an increase in temperature of hyper-complex organic structures and the end result of their interaction with an animal organism. It is quite possible that some food cooked at low temperature won't make any health problems - I mean long-term problems, not only short-term ones. But I do not see any interest in cooking food at low temperature, since the pleasure of eating instinctively raw original foodstuffs is much greater that what we could ever obtain with a diet. Any such diet would be more difficult to practice than strict original nutrition (which I don't consider a diet) as many guy have found out since long ago here in Switzerland. For most people, long-term instinctive nutrition is easy only as long as you do it without exceptions. It's like if you quit smoking: you better not smoke again a single cigarette if you don't want to start smoking again.
Also, there is a recent article in the very official French "Impact Medecin Hebdo" of February 2, 1996 reporting that the first 4 known human diseases appeared simultaneously with the mastering of the fire. But sure, they didn't bother to cook at low temperature...)
7. I would rather write: according to instincto empirical findings and theory.
8. Is really the whole scene at the Chateau very cult-like ? I've been several times there and I never saw any form of cult. What I found there was rather some common people as well as some very brilliant persons. Of course, like everywhere, common people have a propensity to be dogmatic and tend to understand more than what Burger says, taking for the ultimate truth what he presents as hypothesis. Most people need solid ground to believe, not a theory to be put into questioning every day and every hour as Burger strongly recommended. He took long diatribes to explain us that what he says is only a theoretical model, that a theory is never the ultimate truth but a temporary explanation to be modified or abandoned in the future, once we have more facts and understanding of these facts.
9. In 1987, Burger warned us that instinctos could contract MALARIA and would not self-heal with instinctive nutrition. In case of malaria, he said, we better immediately take chloroquin. Bruno Comby apparently ignored this fact: in a discussion group some years latter, someone asked him if there was any diseases which couldn't be healed with instinctive nutrition. I answered "malaria" and he was really surprised, disagreeing with me.
10. In 15 years of instinctive nutrition, I never got any parasite. I heard of some instinctos getting taenia. I consider it as a risk, a remote risk if you don't eat meat of animals having access to garbage, human crops such as corn, or processed food leftovers. But anyway, since drugs are available against most parasites, what is the problem ?
11. Corn and cereals grains, specially wheat, shall better be avoided. The reason for it was initially unknown, thought artificial selection inducing mutations was suspected. The discovery was empirical, as it was with milk. Now, this finding has fond scientific evidence in well-documented papers, such as: "The origins of agriculture ?
a biological perspective and a new hypothesis" by Greg Wadley & Angus Martin, Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne. Published in Australian Biologist 6: 96 - 105, June 1993 http://www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/EPM/papers/GW_paper.html. I also found on the web a document in French called "A qui appartient le blé" which entirely confirms Burger's initial suspicions : http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1770/ble.htm Alternatively, it can be found with the word "Aegylopse": the author made a spelling mistake, the proper name is "Aegilops". I contacted him, and his answer further confirmed Burger's hypothesis. He got those infos from his father, who was working at the external relations of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research ( INRA, former CNRA ).
Rice, for instance, does not seem to give any troubles. But you don't need to germinate it to eat it, unlike what you write. It is hard when dry, so you can soak it in water and eat it when it is soft and tasty as you like. By the way, the choice of instinctive food is unlimited: anything is edible in any state as long as you like it and the thing is original and unprocessed.
12. Of course instinctos also die and I never thought I will get immortal... Everyone knows that some pesticides and other stuff such as asbestos fibres, air pollution or exposure to high levels of radioactivity may trigger a cancer 20, 30 or more years latter. Maybe wheat and dairy products too, whatever your diet is at the time. Instinctive nutrition is not a bullet-proof armour against cancer: it only diminishes your chances of being struck by diseases due to processed food, not eliminating them totally if you ever ate that kind of stuff ( that's only logical reasoning ! ). Many living instinctos could be dead today if they had gone on with processed food. Who knows ? I could even be dead myself, or at least sick or looking older, but that I can't prove, of course !
13. Less frequent sexuality ? No. Not compulsory anymore, OK, that's right, I can testify. But I can also testify that in a relationship some time ago, neither her nor I ever before experienced so frequent intercourse. ( She had started instinctive nutrition along soon after we met. )
14. Burger's metasexuality theory is another subject, a subject on which instinctos disagree. I think it'd be better not to write comments about it without a good knowledge of it.
15. A further interesting subject is Burger's theoretical model of the viral phenomenon. A paper on it in English can be found at: G o o g l e's cache of http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/5976/virus.html. Alternatively, the word "Anopsology" will lead to it.
17. Burger's personality is the target of French journalists, administration and justice. Whether the charges against him are groundless or not is an issue which doesn't concern his theories. These theories go very much beyond the nutrition problems and that's where it becomes really interesting, controversial and... disturbing for many persons. I do not know whether there is real Justice and I doubt that Justice can be done by humans beings. It is rather vengeance.
Taking a look at www.savesaltspring.com, one realise that acting to preserve life on Earth and fight against those whom destroy the nature may lead you to jail. If you can get up to 60 days of arrest for trying to save some acres of primary forest, no matter whether you are a minor or an elder, 15 years of prison is quite cheap for I guy who suggest a theory that might save the whole planet.
Best regards,
François Dovat
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