Hi Martha,

you wrote:
>Hi Stefan , so you live in Germany. When you say you eat your food raw does
>that mean that your food is always cold?

Not necessarily. I like warm avocados and warm tropical fruits very much.
"Warm" denotes below 40 degrees Celsius.
I have built a box with a heating and temperature control that can warm
up my food to 35 degrees, which is a typical tropical temperature.
Tropical food tastes much better when eaten at their natural temperatures.
So you see I like warm food but it is still raw (denaturing starts above
40 degrees).

>I find that being in the northern
>hemisphere i need to eat warm foods in the winter as i find them more
>sustaining and nourishing. What is your body type? I am a Yin person, medium
>framed and very slim.

Warm foods are not the same as warming foods. E.g. I do not warm up nuts
but half an hour after ingestion they warm me up. I don't know my body
type but slim and medium framed would describe it very well. How can I
determine?

>The cooking of food makes it more digestible for people whose digestive fire
>is not optimal. The chinese regard too much raw food as too cooling and thus
>undermines the digestive fire.

I know this from Roberta, a TCM practicioner who unfortunately has left
this list. She told me that every food ranges on a scale of heating/cooling.
There are cooling foods (like bananas, other tropical fruits) and there
are heating foods, like nuts, fish, meat.
So I wouldn't say that raw foods themselves are always cooling. Also
my experience tells me quite the opposite. Man can a chunk of wild pork
be warming - even if eaten at refrigerator temperature!

>With regards eating raw meat i would find this too awful to consider for me.

The disgust disappears mostly after some months on raw food. Maybe you
should try again. You can also try raw fish - this is the approach most
people who are going raw are taking. Fresh raw tuna for example tastes
excellent and is not awful at all.

>What about eating chicken? Cooking helps to destroy harmful bacteria. Not
>all cooked meat is cancer producing . This depends on how it is cooked.
>Frying and smoking meats can be more carcinogenic.

Chicken is of course a perfect raw food but it is difficult to get
good qualities. Most chicken are fed wheat which is considered bad
by some raw foodists. Concerning bacteria I trust my stomach to have
enough acid ready to kill them all, especially for animal foods which
require much more acid than plants.

AFAIK Kirt Nieft is cooking his meat, at least to the state "rare" and
can tell you more about his way of doing this. This is not what I do
but sounds very reasonable and may be worth a test. For more information
you can take a look on the paleofood list on the same server. They
discuss paleolitic (partially cooked) nutrition.

>I am not a vegan or a vegetarian as i found that this diet was not good for
>my health. I include now some animal proteins but i avoid most dairy as it
>is too drenched in antibiotic residues and it is too heavy for me.

I see. Instinctive eaters like me do not consume milk or dairy since
they argument, that milk was not available for humans for the longest
time in evolution. Only recently in the neoliticum (sp?) milk was
introduced - not enough for genetic adaptation to take place.

I have found milk, even raw milk to be unsuitable for me and have never
tried it again after two unsuccessful tries.

Technical question: can you omit the full quote of my text below your
answer? Just quote the parts you are referring to in the middle of your
text like I am doing here. Thanks!

Instinctive regards from icy cold Berlin,

Stefan