Ellie:
> >In favor of raw vs rare: Less demand on the body's digestive enzymes.

 Kirt:
> Do you find any support in your reading of which enzymes besides the
> hydrolytic might survive the hydrocloric acid present in the stomach during
> protien digestion? I especially wonder about lipase in raw fat.

I have no precise ideas about the subject, but I have read somewhere that,
even when you eat meat, the pH of your stomach takes some time to rise,
thus allowing some chemical reactions (involving enzymes) to occur.

You found yourself that the meat, when too cooked, is less digestible. I can
only see two possible explanations:
 -protein denaturation
 -destruction of enzymes.

The question is whether enzymes are so important or not. Obviously, many people
are able to digest a 100% cooked meal. Enzymes may of course help, but aged meat
is already pre-digested. And since rare meat is about 80% raw, the amount of
cooked meat you eat is still small.

When I was still on a cooked diet (1 year ago), I used to cook steaks about 1.5
minute on each side, but needed some salt (and couldn't eat it on a monomeal
format). The reason was probably that it was too fresh. I think that cooked
meals would me much tastier if aged meat was used.


> I wonder if that data might be available in rough form from studies of wild
> animals. I read a non-Goodall chimp book where the researcher was surprised
> at how undigested the feces of the troop was. Perhaps our body is quite
> choosy about what it assimilates--it must be given our relative success as
> a species on agricultura; and industrial diets.

I we digested everything, and ate more than our daily calorie requirement,
then, either we would grow fat very quickly, or our body temperature would
raise dramatically... But the less food you eat, the more difficult it becomes
to get all the necessary nutrients (vitamins, minerals...).

> I wonder the same. I didn't know what hypoglycemia felt like and was always
> baffled by the crashes reported by Ward, Peter, and others after too much
> fruit. I was pretty even, I thought. When eating low carb it was a
> revelation though.

I now also notice what it is like to have a sugar-high (just eat 1 lb of grapes
or 1/2 lb of dates)

> PS I moved into a new place after a few days without a phone/email, but now
> am living with no furniture for a few weeks. Unless I can get some sort of
> desk I will have to limit my email writing--sitting on the floor typing on
> a powerbook just isn't cutting it...;)

Haha! It reminds me 2.5 months ago, sleeping on the floor for a few days...

>>The problem is: my attraction for meat is abating now.

>I know exactly what you mean here. Why isn't a low carb all-raw diet
>satisfying? No organs? Evolution?

Given our attraction for aged meat, our ancestors probably ate
 -scavenged aged meat
 -hunted or scavenged cooked meat.

I wonder how much organs they got from scavenged meat. Do predators leave enough
organs to other species?

Maybe, due to our history of cooking, we are not able to eat a high amount of
meat, unless we cook it. Or maybe our "natural" diet doesn't contain so much
meat so that we have to eat it every day. Of course, there remains the
Eskimos, but maybe there has been some partial genetic adaptation to a high
consumption of meat. We know that less than 9000 years were enough for some
populations to adapt to dairy products up to a certain point (by producing more
lactase), so I can perfectly imagine that Eskimos produce more enzymes than the
average American (if such a person exists). [that of course is only
speculation from me].

>>some forms of light cooking; but if so, I will eat cooked meat only rarely

>Pun spelled backwards is "nup" and that's e-nup outta you...

Wow! Next time, you will see nup-e's outta me...

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis
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