JL:
>Deborah,

>thanks a lot for sharing with us your experience, doubts, sufferings,
>intimate struggles. Your letters are so full of emotions, I can hardly
>tell in a language that is foreign for me how much I was moved and
>impressed by reading them, even though I do not know Zephyr.

>Anyway, the details you supplied to us are more than enough to start
>some reflections about instincto theory, allopathic medicine, meat
>eating and such.

Hear, hear, JL!

>I don't think Zephyr's unfortunate experience should deter any
>instincto from eating meat or stir an excessive fear of
>parasites. Meat is not the only food that is contaminated by
>parasites, and instinctive quality animals do not harbor
>trichinella.

Hmmm. Sounds great in theory (or by definition!) but I wonder. Even at the
Chateau I understand that regularly-raised piglets are purchased and then
raised on scraps. They were hardly odorless as I remember it. We also were
amazed to see the few sheep they had with incredibly ugly spurating lesions
all over their faces and neck. Where do these instinctive quality animals
exist? Even most wild seafood is significantly polluted these days. And
Zephyr's mongoose was a wild one, which is supposed to be very
instincto-quality (though I guess we assume that human garbage was part of
the ecosystem in which the mongoose lived?)

As for whether Zephyr's experience should deter any RAFing: it should at
least make them think twice, maybe three times. It makes me eschew
carnivores on principle, which I _would've_ eaten according to pleasure
before. (As for omnivores, like raw-fed pigs, I wonder if I'd be able to
resist. Like swordfish, which is reportedly among the most polluted
billfish, I might well eat pig, especially if I raised it myself.) BUT, my
days of recommending RAF to anyone are over. How can it be otherwise, JL?

>Of course, the fact that many SADders are infested without serious
>symptoms, and that a long-time instincto like Zephyr has a low
>immunity (and cholesterol problems, and so on) may be a serious
>argument against excessive meat eating. Anyway, frugality is perhaps
>as important as eating raw, and counting flesh in pounds instead of
>ounces sounds a bit like overeating to me. Our cousins chimps eat only
>very little meat (1% of their diet+5% insects), and maybe our instinct
>is not adapted to handling such heavy quantities. Maybe meat is very
>valuable to chimps because it is scarce (like sugar?)

Yet the latest research interpets the % of animal foods in paleolithic
times to be 50% or more!!! I am very confused.

>Instincto "theory" has at least the merit to conciliate scientific
>results with naturist philosophy by putting forward evolutionary
>arguments, but I think it is a double-edged sword, since:
>
>1)The very fact that natural *selection* occurs means that a
>sufficient number of deaths have to eliminate the less adapted;

And natural selection seems to have favored animal foods in the human diet.
There seems to be no way around that, unless one argues for significant
genetaic adaptation since agriculture...

>2)Of course, humans cannot be compared with fishes that lay thousands
>of eggs, or even with rats or rabbits. Many wild animals get
>infectious diseases, parasites and so on, but the question would be:
>is the human species privileged? Could humans have no predators,
>harmful parasites, deadly viruses? It seems to me that it is not the
>case as proved (?) by the following simple argument: as a woman who
>doesn't use contraception has -say- at least 6 children in her life
>(humans are probably *more* fertile than chimpanzees, since female
>chimps are sexually receptive only very occasionally), roughly two
>thirds of humans under natural conditions would die before reaching
>adulthood.

Interesting. But is the increased fertility a result of improved nutrition
(meaning more animal foods?). I wonder if it is all that significant, given
hunter and gatherers strong tendency to space their children widely. Of
course, I agree that there is no reason to believe humans have no
predators, harmful parasites, deadly viruses...

>3)Burger seems to believe that the normal lifespan of humans is 969
>years, but evidence shows that the average lifespan during the

Burger needs to grow up ;)

>Paleolithic was 35, that no tribe in the world has a high % of
>centenarians (BTW, the age of Vilcabambans is often largely
>overrated), and that trepanations were performed during prehistory
>(which proves humans needed surgical operations).

Plenty of bone troubles too, but these findings are not interpeted as a
result of excessive cooking, which may have something to do with some of
the sorrier health implicated in the fossil record.

>Of course, a few arguments for instincto theory remain:
>1) As we were intoxicated in our mother's wombs, and then during many
>years of our life, only the third generation can be considered as
>healthy.
>2) The food we have is more or less denatured by artificial selection,
>chemical treatments, pollution of the environment by various metals
>and remanent pesticides.
>3) Food is not the whole thing, our life is largely unnatural by many
>other aspects.
>4) Wild animals have an extreme variety of plants, medicinal herbs,
>etc... at their disposal.

All 4 smell more like unfalsifiable excuses than useful arguments to my
nose. I _wish_ they were reason enough to dismiss the horrible track record
of instincto, but IMO they don't come close.

>I have never believed the hygienist arguments and the anti-vaccine
>advocates, but I do think that with a proper nutrition + better
>sanitary conditions + exercising + favorable psychological
>environment, 95% of all diseases, if not more, could be avoided. I
>don't need promises of Perfect Health to keep faith in the efficiency
>of instincto-nutrition. Nutritional practices are not religions; for
>me, nutrition is one among other health practices, even if it is one
>among the most important. I don't care about abstract arguments relying
>upon success of Mr. X or Mrs. Y to prove or disprove the validity of
>the general theory; most important is my inner feeling, how instincto
>affects my own body, etc...

Though I agree with much of your paragraph, the trouble is that we need to
use other's expereince as an important form of reality-checking. Guy-Claude
continues to believe in some fantastic notions (irresponsibly so IMO), and
Denis may be not far behind. Burger's wife dies of cancer in, what, her
fifties, sixties? He almost dies from malaria. At least one woman does die
of malaria. Several other instinctos get seriously ill with malaria. Zephyr
nearly dies of trich and who-knows-what. Presumably all of them share(d)
your (and, to be honest, mine) inner feeling that instincto is valid and
health-giving. On my tally card, you are one of the few instinctos who
counts in the reasonable and non-fanatical column--and you're still a
"beginner" to a degree ;)

As I value your contributions to this list greatly, JL, I am very curious
as to how you see the sorry instincto track record. If it is so valid, why
do not more people thrive on it? Is it just questionable raw material, so
to speak?

>I guess that stubbornness, pooh-pooh-ing mainstream medicine only
>reveals a fear of losing one's self-pride, many years of beliefs that
>humans are perfect but all the diseases, wars and frustrations are due
>to society, cooked food or whatever. Conversely, I know many people
>who believe in Progress, Reason and so on.
>
>When will we grow up, and realize that Nature is not perfect, that it
>is a perpetual search of compromise, and that it doesn't care for good
>or evil? That humans are not fallen angels, that agressivity,
>diseases, death, laziness are natural?

I would replace "fallen angels" with "little gods" but you are spot on in
the above paragraphs ;)

Cheers,
Kirt