Jean-Louis & Denis : Welcome to Raw-food! I have enjoyed reading your
contributions very much.

Denis said:
>The principle is "neophobia", a behaviour related term which
>designates the attitude of free ranging animals in front of novel,
>unknown foods. "neophobia" or "fear of novelty", suspicion,
>cautiousness. We human beings are so much used to take profit of
>anything that looks like edible that we tend to view instinctive
>nutrition as a theory which forbids us swallowing foodstuffs which are
>repellant to either one of our sense of smell and taste. Whereas in
>natural like conditions, animal not only eschew bad smelling/tasting
>foods but also NON SMELLING- NON TASTING FOODS, for they
>are potentially as dangerous as the first category.

Very interesting points. Do you have any examples of non-smelling and
non-tasting foods being as dangerous as bad smelling/tasting foods?
Except for mushrooms I suppose.

Denis said:
>Now a little drill : what was the name of the early US advocate of
>instinctive nutrition  who wrote hundred years ago :
>"THE TASTEBUDS ARE THE TALLY KEEPERS OF OUR STOMACH"
>(tally-keepers :  in french = agent comptable )

You have got me here. Who is it?

Denis said:
>Stop. Are you serious when you say that malaria is a counter example
>of the beneficial Microbe theory because one unfortunate twenty-four
>year old girl who had previously eaten cooked foods for eighteen
>years, and whose parents had been eating cooked foods since
>Methuselah, has died beacuse a doctor didn't recognize in her the
>fierce symptoms of a ternary or quaternary fever ?

Who is  this girl is and what happened to her? When
Bruno was here in California last year, he mentioned that some
instinctos traveling in South East Asia had come down with malaria and
that they had no choice but to take medicine to get over it.

Denis said:
>The reality unfortunately is much bleaker,  not really a  selling
>point for  future  instincto : it will take generations of raw eaters
>to restore our "health capital" to its normal attributes. This idea
>that you can only marginally  recoup after 25, the errors that your
>parents allowed to be perpetrated on you  when you were a child is an
>idea I very much value.


Since instincto has only been around for a few decades, the above is
more speculation than fact and maybe even instincto could do with a
little fine tuning. A good reality check for me is when I see how many
people seem to stabilize on diets much inferior to the instincto and
managing to turn around their health in a relatively short time. It
would help if you could define "normal attributes" and elaborate on
what kind of results the "average" person who practices instincto - and
stays with it - in your opinion can expect to have. Also,  the belief
that it will take generations to repair the damage that an inadequate
diet has caused could easily become a self-fulfilling limitation in
itself.


Denis said:
>Personally when I hear that kind of argument, I do my best to change
>the subject of the discussion.  I have _never_ talked to someone in 8
>eight years who didn't promptly bring up objections to RAF on
>parasitical grounds. Never ever.)

This is very natural, and I think that if you instead of changing the
subject try to fully meet & understand people's objections, they will
be able to transcend them quite easily. I just recently spoke with
somebody on the phone who had attended a week-end workshop with Bruno
Comby last year and had decided afterwards not to eat RAF out of fear
of getting parasites.  However, I managed during the course of our
relatively short conversation to open his mind to the idea of trying
RAF because I could relate to his fears. The same with 3 friends of
mine who are on a pretty standard diet.  After hearing Aajonus
Vonderpanitz speak on the virtues of RAF's, I told them
enthusiastically about the lecture.  Soon there after I was out of town
for a week and when I came back to my huge surprise they had all been
eating raw meat and loved it, and two of them are now eating it almost
every day.  Were they afraid of parasites? - you bet. But their fears
been sufficiently addressed  and now they are very happy to have
discovered this new way of eating meat. They still eat cooked meat but
are eating more& more of it raw and one of them is already reporting
some health benefits from this new addition to the diet.

Denis said:
>Quite wrong. This used to be Burger 's main argument against
>parasites, as delivered in his two days "Cours d'introduction"

You have lost me here. What does the above mean?

Denis said:
>That taste buds do not protect against many a parasitic infection ..
>Our instinct does protect us, but our curiosity is often stronger than
>our instinct...

I guess you are you talking about instinctive eaters. I am convinced
that humans will always remain inquisitive creatures in search of peak
experiences and that curiosity will be a factor even for future
generations of instinctive eaters.

Kirt :
>>There is some evidence that wild primates will "self-medicate" with
>particular vegetation, apparently to purge intestinal parasites.

Denis said:
>I wonder if our beloved cousins  really follow your reasoning when
>they wander in the quest for the miracle herbs and plants...
>certainly true

If instinct is so easily overridden by curiosity it sure waters down
the concept quite a lot.

Denis said:
>I don't think Comby is crazy enough to think that all parasites and
>viruses can be reverted to the innocuous type in a primitive food
>environment .

I assume this is because you do not believe that instinctos can achieve
total immunity from parasites in one life-time? If so, does it not make
it a little foolish to rely only on ones instincts on such a
potentially delicate matter, and if it can improve somebody's condition
why not lend Mother Nature guiding hand?


Denis said:
>I'M  FLABBERGASTED. You guys are talking as if you had been offered
>the post of Prime Minister and were currently reviewing the pros and
>cons of letting your former NFL allies get one or two minor positions
>in your governemnt.

That is too kind. The question is rather should we let them off on
probation or persecute them to the full letter of the law.;-)

Denis said:
>Wake up guys. You are far away from the promised land.

I am content with that we are giving it our best, but I will always
open the door to new ideas on how to deal with those who are unable to
comply with the list guidelines. If we do not try to clean up in our
ranks who will?

Denis said:
>Is the issue really worth all that scribbling ?

You bet it is. The raw food movement has for too long been controlled
by food faddists and too many people's health have had to pay the price
for it.

Denis said:
>But I think you guys have better things to do than pick a quarrel with
>vegan groups.

This is not a matter of picking a quarrel with vegan groups but trying
to uphold certain standards of civility, credibility and accountability
for the dialogues going on in this listgroup. I could care less if
somebody is a vegan or an instincto. The labels do not interest me but
rather are that the guidelines for the list are being respected and
followed.

Denis said:
>To  think that  these guys could steal away some of  the potential
>audience of INstinctive nutrition is a nonsense :

You can say that again. But what they can make happen is that a lot of
very intelligent and sensitive people leave the list if everything goes
and no standards upheld.

Denis said:
>Firstly  because people tend to move freely  from one group to
>another, according to their passing mood and fancies, spreading around
> the good things they 've learned from you, seeding the seeds of
>change amongst the vegans, the vegetarians, JUST WHEN  you are
>deploring their departure from your group. Secondly because you seem
>not to have understood that the basis for all
>"conversion" whether to Instincto or Veganism or  whatever....  is
>love and passion, and not rationalizing. You may debunk NFL dogmas for
>hours in front of an audience , people who have not opened their heart
>to you will surely not open their hears to what you are saying. "They
>listened to him but they did not hear what he said " (Bible) People
>sense very much your power to love and to live, and they react
>instinctively to that sensation .

Nobody here is on a dietary crusade trying to enlist converts - we are
just calling the shots as we see them.. If you or anybody else have any
specific innovative ideas of how to improve the dialogue and at the
same time uphold the standard of the list, feel free to share them with
us. I am running out of ideas & patience.

Denis said:
>Negative energies towards anybody is just countereffective

I agree. But pointing out hypocrisy and asking for more accountability
and civility hardly qualifies for negativity. And extreme example would
be calling a witness to a murder "negative" for reporting it to the
police. Let us not throw out the baby with the bath water and let us
try to remember that trying to hold subscribers to a private forum like
this to certain ethical & behavioral standards is a very positive
action.

Denis said:
>Similarly, TOM,  saying there are more weirdos amongst rawers than in
>any other group doesn't push
>forward the debate.

Sweeping things under the carpet in denial  sure does not either.  The
fact is that Tom is speaking the truth as he sees it, and he should be
applauded for sticking his neck out the way he has. He is definitely
the person of all of us who has the most to loose by speaking up having
belonged for a long time to the oldest and most active group of raw
food eaters in the world located in San Francisco.

Denis said:
>It might reassure the author of the sentence that he is not one of
>these weirdoes,

I suspect that he is a little deeper than that. ;-)

Denis said:
>but aren't we all weird, in some  sense ?

Of course we are but it is a all matter of degree. I am sometimes "bad"
by not always checking when I suspect that a store clerk has given me
back too much change, but I am never so "bad" that I  go around robbing
little old ladies of their life savings. If you or anybody else think I
am just a bad a zealot as say Ric feel free to speak up and educate me.
To stay with the metaphor, from where I am sitting, Ric is robbing
little old ladies of their life savings, and I will be damned if am
going to let him get away with trying to sweet-talking himself out of
it.

Denis said:
>And isn't our peculiar "weirdness" what makes each of us so love-able

I see nothing lovable about zealotry or bigotry.

Jean-Louis said:
>1) Burger talks a lot about Maillard molecules, and considers their
>existence as a good argument against cooking. However, Maillard
>molecules (and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) only appear at high
>temperatures, not in boiled and steamed veggies.

I had the same understanding but forget my source. Where did you obtain
this information? Do you know at which temperatures they occur for
different foods?

Jean-Louis said:
>2) That our ancestors didn't eat X doesn't mean we shouldn't eat X.
>Our genetic material is more flexible >than we might think: our brain
>was certainly not designed to prove theorems in mathematics.

I'll buy that. :-) And no matter how perfect a system we set up there
will always be exceptions to humble us. Keep those stories coming!

Jean-Louis said:
>I have never read about those studies, but the fact that a small
>stature is an advantage does not seem obvious to me. After all, the
>Homo Sapiens is much taller than the Australopithecus.

Excellent argument. I agree with you that small stature is probably not
to our advantage. From page 96 of the "Paleolithic Prescription" by
Eaton, Shostak & Konners": " It was once thought that , except for the
Cro-Magnon's, our remote ancestors were short, much shorter than we are
today.  However, the 1984 discovery of a nearly complete Homo Erectus
skeleton, found in Kenya by a team led by Richard Leaky and Alan
Walker, was that of a twelve-year-old boy whose projected adult height
would have been 6'2". Intrigued, human paleontologists began to
reexamine existing fragmentary remains of other early humans and found,
much to their surprise, that their heights had been systematically
underestimated."
"The evidence now suggests populations until this century that
preagricultural humans were essentially similar to us in height, or
even slightly taller, for well over a million years, but after the
appearance of agriculture inadequate, limited protein intake "dwarfed"
most succeeding human

Jean-Louis said:
>This is to say that nature may not be as harmonious as we wish, and to
>state that humans have no predators, no harmful parasites and no
>dangerous microbes seems a bit anthropocentrist to me: it reminds me
>of some old speculations about the fact that the world was designed by
>God for humans, and all the evil in Nature has a hidden meaning we
>have to decipher because God, being perfect, cannot be cruel...


Well put. We obviously do have potentially harmful predators in our
environment. The question is will they always be rendered  harmless or
even beneficial on a raw diet that includes RAF? I am very open to the
Beneficial Microbe Theory (BMT) but would  like to know what the
exceptions might be.

Best, Peter
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