>Kirt, I found your response very inspiring and informative. Do not feel
>obliged to answer any of my comments or questions - especially since
>many of them are not directed at you specifically. As it might be a
>long while, before I am ready to experiment with instinctive eating
>myself - I would like to test the limits of regular raw food veganism
>first - I will continue to play the devils advocate, and see what I can
>learn. Hopefully, you will bite a little more. :-)

Devil's advocate? Great fun. It sounds like this issue may have gone around
the block a few times here on veg-raw.

>>>Do you feel any improvement in your health, when you are eating
>>>instinctively rather than just eating 'regular' raw foods?

>> But, in answer to your question, yes, very definately a noticable
>>improvement in the way I feel when not mixing. I also think that
>>besides muddying the metabolism to a degree, mixing prevents deeper
>>detoxing. Thus while eating instincto I feel better, I am also more
>>likely to detox (pretty minor after all these years but clearly
>>detox).

>Feeling purer & better and detoxing a little deeper I do not think will
>cut it for many raw fooders, who might be considering eating
>instinctively.

I have ZERO desire to convince a raw fooder (or anyone else) to eat
instinctively. To each his own (or the non-sexist acronym: TEHO). It may be
that a 70% raw diet is sufficient to prevent many degenerative diseases
from striking early (if the other 30% isn't junk food). It may be that
something else is happening on a 100% raw diet. Probably, the immune system
can be more fully awakened. It seems at least a reasonable hypothesis that
sense-selected raw foods would give the organism its ultimate chance to
recover native health.

I would love to hear why people get into raw foods. I only wish I would
meet a few raw fooders who were more balanced. The few I have met
personally, were not exactly walking advertisements for RF.

>There are many ways to balance a raw foods diet, maybe
>you could have obtained the same results, without going instincto.

Who knows? Perhaps so. As I said, I am not really instincto (the mixing and
juicing). From my experience, I would say that certain results are
dependent on animal foods. As powerful as raw animal foods seem to be, I
would only eat them instinctively as a common-sense safegaurd. The
taste-changes are so pronounced that I wouldn't what to overdo it.

>How does the deeper detox manifest?

Older smells, older symtoms. For example, after dozens (over a few days) of
super tasting melons, the taste falls away, and a greasy face is apparent.
If I squeeze the sides of my nostrils I smell the tiny "threads" of white
fatty stuff coming out the pores and it is unmistakably carryng the odor of
a favorite food of my elementary school years: toast with Skippy Chunky PB
sprinkled with imitation baco bits. Would I have detoxed such stuff if I
hadn't "known" that my body wanted lots of melon (and obliged)?

I also make this assumption: if I don't eat any denatured food, any detox I
have is "deeper" than the last. I have no idea where the crap in my body is
from (is it from bones, from fat cells, etc?). I only have any symptoms
(tenderness in certain tissues, skin eruptions, etc.) and any odors as
clues. Truth told, it is of no great importance that I _understand_ what's
going on. Still, one can't help noticing and hypothosizing. I figure it's
better out than in, whatever it is.

>>>Q: How soon after beginning to eat instinctively, did you start
>>>eating meat? Q: Are you, in your pinion, any healthier from eating
>>>it? Q: Did you begin to crave it, or did you start eating it, because
>>>you thought it might be good for you?

>>Three weeks or so. I started with NO INTENTION of eating raw meat or
>>seafood, but experienced such a calm after a few weeks raw vegan that
>>I simply became curious as to the taste of animal foods.

>I am curious to what made you curious. How long had you been without
>meat at the time?

A few months. I was just starting to get really vegetarianish.

>Could you have been unconsciously trying to fulfil
>the instincto expectation that virtually nobody can expect to succeed
>with the instinctive program for any lenth of time without beginning to
>incoperate some meat into their diet?

I had only Severen's book as a guide (and some cassia he mailed me;
unbelievable). I don't remember such an expectation stated there. Maybe it
was. I think your statement--probably a quote--is maybe a bit much
(virtually nobody? any length of time?). Everyone is different, esp as
regards their nutritional history. I understand many kids have been raised
on mostly raw foods, many of them vegans. It might be news to them that
they are not "succeeding". Is this what they say in France? I remember
something like that in Zephyr's manuscript, but he also mentions that he's
knows a successful vegan instincto.

>Or do you  believe that the
>curiosity arose out of being more in touch with your instinctive needs
>through your new eating habits? There is a big jump from being a calm,
>raw vegan to wanting to experiment with raw meat. If I was calm with a
>stable, consistent blood sugar level - I wish - I doubt that I would
>start thinking of meat - even if I ate only unmixed foods.

You might be surprised.

Instinct or unconscious? Damn if I know. It seems such a long time ago. My
frame of mind early on was fascination with the taste change. Having
already eaten lots of fruit, often as mono-meals, I had some experience
with such a phenomona but thought it was pesticides, eating to close to the
skin, a bad fruit, etc. When I came across the idea that is was instinct
changing the flavor, I set about to verify it for myself and tested every
dang fruit/veggie in the produce departments of Milwaukee, even wild herbs
and alfalfa during time spent in the country. Son-of-a-gun if they didn't
all have changes. Comb honey too, every flavor obtainable. (Many nuts had a
weak change for me. Even today, my wife eats nuts more regularily than I.)
It didn't seem so far out that an oyster or beef would have changes. And
what would it taste like? The "gross-out in my imagination" effect had
nearly disappeared. I attribute this to a new found RF calm. It was a
tumultuous time; many long-held beliefs and philosophies were tumbling
down.

As for the unconscious aspect: I think, from my perspective now, that I
was, and am still, attracted to raw foods for a simple Primal reason: I'm
searching for the perfect meal I never had from my mother's breast. I've
always wanted it (everything) to be REAL, had no capacity to tolerate
bulls--t or hypocritical stuff. Strangely, it took several months to see
that Janov's Primal theories matched my emotional experiences after going
raw. Instincto doesn't solve your problems; it only brings them up to be
solved. Look at Guy-Claude Burger himself and his half-baked "meta". He's a
"bit" neurotic still, one might conclude. I think Instincto and Primal are
flip sides of the same organism coin. For me they are complimentary. Of
course, they both reinforce my need for REAL so maybe I'm a cult of one.

>The argument has been made that meat is an addictive and very
>stimulating substance that is a good survival food but not needed or
>even condusive for optimum health. Your descriptions above could
>support the first part of this argument very well.

Cooked food is addictive to a degree. Your argument is made most often by
vegetarians; it supports their belief system. I could write about the
pleasure plant foods have provided at crucial times is similarly strong
terms. Would that support the idea that plant foods are addictive and
"stimulating"? :)

Seriously, its a little like you and me trying to talk about heroin. What
do we know about how it is EXPERIENCED? A junkie might say, "Its great, I
feel better because of it! Wouldn't want to do without it." And we would
say, "No no no, its BAD for you." Reportedly, heroin is such a rush that if
you and I did shoot up, we would likely become junkies. "Wait a minute,"
you say, "heroin IS bad. Look what happens to junkies!" A downward spiral.
Now does that happen with instinctos who eat raw animal foods? Certainly
not visibly. Not by blood analysis. All that happens is they have pleasure
with it at times like other foods. They (sometimes begrudgingly, like my
wife and others) accept it as condusive to optimum health.

I am delighting in the beef, lamb, and shellfish available here in NZ as I
delighted in the durian, jackfruit, and coconuts in Thailand. (Or sweet
corn, dates, and yellowtail in S.Cal) That animal foods were important for
me was a surprise for me. Almost as big a surprise as raw foods in general.

>Cleaning your clothes is not something you can do without, unless you
>are living in tropical nudist colony. Though cleaning clothes is
>definitely not without its problems, it pales in comparison with eating
>meat, which is more of a real choice, and which is having a devastating
>effect on the enviroment.

Eating raw meat is not having a devasting effect on the environment. Hardly
anyone does it. :) Sorry...

Whatever humans eat it's devastating; there are simply too many of us. If I
had to choose, I'd take seafood over meat, shellfish specifically.
Shellfish are obtainable w/o devasting effects on the environment in many
parts of the world.

>To justify getting any of my calories from
>animals, I would need more than the potential pleasure of the
>experience to motivate me - like overcoming ailments that a regular raw
>foods diet could not help heal, greatly increased stamina or strength,
>increased longevity etc.

(You get more than calories from raw animal foods. Look at any table of
nutrient analysis if you dig that kinda thing.) I admit that pleasure is
more important than other justifications to me (and perhaps to the
self-selected group of instincto worldwide). What motivated you to raw
foods, I wonder?

>Unfortunately, you like most instinctive
>eaters were not on a regular raw foods vegan diet fot very long before
>switching, and even though you alternate back and forth with the salad
>eating, it makes it difficult for an observer to judge, whether or not
>you are just getting away with eating all that meat, because it is raw
>and that you would be better off without it.

I would also be very interested in longtime raw vegans (who seem as rare or
rarer than instinctos) experience with instincto. You forget though that I
have gone extended periods of time (as long as eight months at a stretch)
w/o any animal foods. My experience is that in the long term a raw vegan
diet is naggingly unsatisfying (even in the humid tropics!!). It's more
than getting "sick of fruit". Something becomes unbalanced. Perhaps I'm
making up for lost time and my meat/seafood consumption will settle down
over time.

Maybe it will be found that meat/seafood was the big blunder of the early
instincto days, that is was attractive only because early instinctos were,
on the whole, switching to raw from traditional diets (usually including
hefty amounts of dairy and cooked meat). Maybe second and third generation
instinctos (if ever) will have little use for animal foods. Maybe grains
will be found to be healthful to the human diet for those not overloaded
with severely denatured grains. In the mean time, I'll let my taste have
its way. What else can I do? Eat according to some theory of what I should
eat? After over seven years this would seem very silly to me.

Let me devil's advocate you back. Instincto says your senses are best able
to nourish you from a selection of raw foods. You say meat is bad, a
priori. Your hypothesis is not testable since because meat is bad it must
be avoided. On the other hand, instinctos are self-selected, meaning that
most people who want to eat instincto are unable/unwilling to continue
eating instinctively--the long-timers are a minority of the folk who became
interested in it. Why doesn't it "hit the spot" for the "majority"?
Instinctos have all the excuses lined up (they didn't give it long enough;
they didn't test animal foods(!); they have psychological blockages; didn't
eat enough cassia; ad nausium) but these ideas are as similarly flawed as
"meat is bad" a priori. There is no test short of forcing humans to eat a
particular diet, which thankfully is not going to happen. (Yikes, I guess I
ended up devil's advocating myself by the end of that paragragh! :))

The test that matters most is -your- experience. In the mean time there are
theories and arguments to banter around. Incidently, Melisa (loved one) and
I are finishing a manuscript as regards "instinctive living" which is not
just about food. Each chapter is punctuated by a dialog with a skeptic.
Thus we are trying to think of all the arguments against instincto (not
only meat) for the skeptic to lay back on us. Raw vegans, often familiar
with the hipper nutritional theories, come up with some of the most
interesting arguments. Let em rip.

>Also, one might argue
>especially knowing some of the cultish aspects of how instincto
>philosophy has been practised, especially in France, that instincto is
>more about trying to recapture the innocence of a lost past that maybe
>never existed, under the guidance of a charasmactic father figure, than
>getting to the truth of the issue of the optimum human diet.

I feel lucky (and proud) to be an outsider. I was several months fledgling
instincto on my own before we visited the Chateau outside of Paris. By that
time we could really appreciate the food and NOT appreciate the "cultish
aspects", mostly "meta". Unfortunately, beginners often feel their mental
house of cards come tumbling down and are probably all ears for some of
Guy-Claude's hocus pocus, most of which I'm not clear about. However, our
short visit (four days before heading on to Spain and Portugal) was enough
to meet people who were NOT following any father-figures. My impression was
that most successful instinctos drifted away from the Chateau and led there
own lives. This was over six years ago, and for the last few years we
haven't got any reliabe "news" from France. Where do you get your
information? I'd love to have some info on how things are going in
France/Europe instincto-wise.

>I sometimes wonder whether the instinctive eating philosophy is just a
>fantasy - a system that gives a feeling of belonging and finding ones
>roots by giving an easy answer to a lot difficult and confusing
>questions + a good excuse to indulge for people with lives devoid of
>much pleasure.

Instinctive philosophy gives a feeling of belonging?? News to me; big news
to me. I belong less to "society" than ever, though most family and friends
view me as ever-more pleasant and tolerent (go figure). Closer to "nature"
perhaps, but nature is as warped these days as my subconscious. I don't
want to surround myself with instincto/raw fooders.  I want to live a quiet
life in the real world (but away from the freeway! :)).

As for "a good excuse to indulge" I am less sure. I enjoy that I can eat my
fill (but am well aware that I never got my fill early on). Probably I
overeat, eating until I'm sure the taste has changed pronouncedly, or
selecting another food when I really don't _need_ it. It lessens gradually
over time, but will likely be there until I feel all the old repressed food
stuff. Wish me luck. As for pleasure: I used to think (before raw) I knew
what pleasure was and thought I had a pleasurable enough life, but now
realise I was too insensitive to experience it, so maybe I am an example of
a life devoid of much pleasure who indulged in instincto. If so, I'm glad I
did. The flip side is how afraid many people are to follow their pleasure
(in food, sex, etc). Guilty by suspicion. Let me ask you, Peter, aren't you
worried that if you tested some buffalo meat and it tasted great, that you
would feel guilty? Indeed, your caveats regarding instinctive "philosophy"
are just as applicable to raw vegans, except that there is less pleasure.
However, if by "instinctive philosphy" you mean Guy-Caude Berger's "Meta"
then all bets are off. From what I've seen "meta" tells more about his
early unmet needs than it does about instinct.

>Yet, instinctive eating is very thought provoking and
>impossible to get around, so I think we will be tossing around these
>issues for quite a while yet. But, I cannot see how the planet can
>sustain itself, if everybody went instincto even with 20% of calories
>coming from animals, though I might be wrong on this one.

This situation perhaps resulted because our species drifted from its
instinct and thus its role as a ecosystem-regulated animal was uprooted. If
so, now that everone is eating mostly grass seeds is that a strike against
eating raw? That we shouldn't eat raw because there is not enough if
everyone did. I tend to think of it on a more mundane and immediate level.
What would I need to live food/energy self-suffuciently? A few acres in
frost-free climate, fresh water and access to shellfish. A year-round
orchard and garden, some chickens and its whipped. I'm too cycnical to
think of a renewal planet-wise. Unless we start talking comet collisions or
super-viruses (which I think a disportionate number of raw fooders would
survive) there doesn't seem to be much chance of turning off the
degradation of the planet.

>       You say that under ideal conditions with no problems of
>supplying high quality foods, 40% of your diet would be from animals.
>That means that you most be compromising your health somewhat by only
>eating 20%. If not, why not 10% or even less, which I understand is the
>level most instinctive eaters stabilize at%  How do you account for
>needing so much more? Are you really following your instincts, or are
>your desires and tastes being dictated by some inner neurotic need?

Plenty of inner neurotic need in there (so much that I can't answer
realistically?). What you say is news to me. I don't have the contact with
the instinctos that you do so I am ignorant to the level that is
"right".10%? Maybe if I had known I was supposed to stabilize at 10% I
would have. :) Perhaps in one way or another I am still not stabilized. The
point I was trying to get across earlier is that until New Zealand we had
never had access to virtually inlimited high-quality animal foods. It was
always a minor problem, pain in the --s, and/or expensive to get meat or
seafood. In Bangkok (four years with trips to USA three times, where we
indulged in Seattle's best seafood) we had none. I can imagine eating
shellfish/meat every other day, as I can imagine eating it once a week.
What percentages are that? Since I consider that fruit/veggies have
relatively few calories relative to meat and seafood perhaps my % were too
highly stated, or maybe everybody is unique. In my first couple years I
could eat huge quantities of shellfish and now only a couple dozen satisfy.
I think when my body has had it's fill of each food, then the amounts fall
off. Same thing happened with cherimoyas in Peru.

My nutritional history may be part of the equation as well. 26 years of
sh-t would be putting it mildly. For weeks at a time in college I seemed to
exist on beer and popcorn (the salty topping is a recurrant detox) from the
theatre I worked at.

>The
>fact that quite a few instinctive eaters still seem to have problems
>with overeating even after years on the diet indicates that instincts
>are not the only factor involved, when it comes to eating our food. It
>seems that instinct can easily be compromised. Maybe, if you were doing
>all catching & killing yourself, eating meat would be less romantic and
>you would eat less.

Right on for the overeating (raw vegans, contrawise, don't overeat, they
binge :)). Instincts aren't the only factor in our food. We agree totally.
Nothing but disagreement as regards catching and killing myself being less
romantic. It would be more so. (I can hear you cringing thru the net phone
wires!) From reports about the bounty of wild game, fish and shellfish in
North America pre-1500 an instincto would never have it so good. The thing
is, though, that I have no mental desire to eat less animal foods. It
doesn't work that way; I follow my pleasure among the raw foods obtainable
to me. Whether it is lamb or celery doesn't matter much to me. If my taste
for animal foods drops off, I won't celebrate or pout. If it doesn't taste
good why would I eat it. The answer is somewhere among all the other
factors. I would only add that mental constructions like "meat is not
condusive to optimum health" is one of those factors.

>Or do our instincts get to rule over everything
>else, as soon as we get in touch with them, as you seem to suggest?

Pretty much so, yeah, but it's not so much "ruling" as jsut laying the
foundation for the rest. A connected person has instinctive access to
his/her intellegence and can use it as need be. That ability to abstract
doesn't direct traffic. The current mindset is that the cognitive brain
rules over everything. Our consciousness is only what's left after
subtracting repression. Raw fooders are closer than many to their
repressions and (if they don't act out the energy) may be able to let the
feeling wash over them and turn a bit of the unconscious into the
conscious.

Zephyr had a great line: You are not your mind; you are the creator of your
mind.

>And
>if they do and that carries over into other aspects of life, will it
>promote the jungle law, the survival of the fittest, more greed or work
>towards the unity of mankind?

Humans who have their mammalian needs met aren't likely greedy; it is when
those needs are unmet that greed, etc. is compulsive. Unity of mankind?
What is that? I'm not being sarcastic; they are empty words to me. Big
ideas that leave me with static. I know this probably proves to you that
I'm oaffish, but I haven't mass murdered anyone lately. :)

>These concerns might seem prudish, but
>have we not evolved from being purely instinctive creatures, and if we
>try to turn back the clock, are we not ignoring our own evolutionary
>development?

Our next evolutionary step. Maybe its to correct the misstep we took with
our cooking fires way back when.

>Does the fact that we are the only creature on the planet
>with a higher consciousness not have any impact on how we conduct
>ourselves...

We are the only creature on the planet with a split consciousness; for me,
it is glorifying a tremendous shortfall to call it a _higher_
consciousness. The only reason we must be concerned about saving the planet
is because we (with our higher consciousness) trashed it in the first
place.

>and is the price of the instincto pleasures not inevitably
>guilt, bad karma and denial? - What I do like about instinctive eating
>is that it forces us to take a good look at ourselves and not leave one
>stone unturned.

Yikes! Plenty of guilt, bad karma, and denial w/o instincto. My guess
(barely defendable) is that there is no time in prehistory to turn the
clock back to; that our species may well have been cooking before the brain
size expolsion leveled off. Perhaps we have never had a truly human
instinctive past.

>Breeding insects does not tax the ecosystem, and as we have
>evolved from being insectvores, as you point out, it would probably be
>our best bet for satisfying our potential needs for animal food.

Sounds fine to me. As long as it tastes good! :)

>Many
>see the concept of instinctive pleasure as a very egocentrical demand
>for instant gratification and as being very antisocial in many aspects.

It a biological reality. We have a big enough brain to repress it, but it
takes effort to turn it into an egocentrical demand for instant
gratification. Is the same true of thrist, and breathing?

How so anti-social? Because of the meat again? I don't see that it is any
more socially weird than raw vegan, which I more or less am in social
situations.

>However, if instinctive eaters were really to walk their talk, they
>would get their 'meat' from insects and help preserve and sustain the
>planet in the process. - I am glad I am not an instinctive eater. :-)

After several weeks of raw I was in the biggest funk about the planet and
all. I, at one point during this funk, saw a TV documentary about whales
and their plight. Man, it speared me. I was laying down thinking hugely
doom thoughts about the whales, how we have destroyed nature so. I start
tearing and saying really low, like a chant, "it's all f--ked, it's all
f--ked" and then is washes over me: _I'm_ f--ked. I'm twisted and turned
and rampaged. The real me underneath all the twisting never had a chance.
I'm f--ked laying in that crib alone. It is my human nature that was
doomed. That was the source of my funk and even my whale tears. Afterwards,
the whales are still sad, nature is still raped. Nothing is changed. But
I'm a litle more conscious.

Perhaps that is all the more egocentricism for you. TEHO. Maybe you want to
find a lifestyle consistent with saving the planet, makes good sense to me.
I think raising insects would be a good project for kids if they had the
interest. If, as you say, instinctos eat 10% animal foods, what is all the
fuss about? That's sustainable. It's McDonalds that isn't.

>>Now this is nonsense, but if you substitute fruit for insects and
>>animal foods for fruit, you get the natural hygiene argumaent for
>>vegetarianism.

>I do not understand your point. It might be me, but could you make it a
>little clearer?

Sorry; typing too fast...

Shelton, among others, argues that we are supremely adapted to fruit (nary
a mention of insects) but that meat was a perversion, an addiction, which
humans were never meant to eat, that we haven't evolved to it because it
was too recently added to the human diet. Sure animals like chimps might
eat it but they can be perverted and addicted too (after all they're only
animals).

I, in the previous post, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, argued that fruit was too
late an addition to our diet and we are truly insectarians. To be fair,
instinctos argue the same about grains and dairy, but back it up with taste
experiments anyone can try for themselves.

>- I am glad I am not an instinctive eater. :-)

Peter, you come across more ambivilant than that. Maybe you are phrasing
things to be non-threatening to me (an obviously hoggish, egocentric,
planet destroyer! :)) or just to get some discussion going on the new
veg-raw. Or maybe you are a bit ambivilant. Have you experimented at all
with taste-changes or do you eat mostly raw food recipe kind of things.
Taste changes are not a theory and are interesting and ever-changing. You
don't have to eat meat to have a taste-change. There is a reasonable debate
to be had about meat-eating, but what about the rest of instincto?

Anyway, I don't know if I can keep up this detail in response, but it beats
packing for the movers next week...

Cheers,
Kirt