Kirt,
I don't want to make the post to long (to many different topics that
disserve to be treated in more depth at there own). So I answer only to few
of your statements/questions. More follows later on.

>I agree. Wild animal foods I have been fortunate enough to savor (venison,
>elk, pelican, boar, various birds, various wild fishes and shellfish) had a
>sharper taste-change to me than farmed animal foods.

Sounds delicious. I envy you for the variety you have to choose from.=20
I still remember my early instincto days where I did not have or tried my
now so staple eggs and rarely ate meat, mostly fish (delicious half dried
salmon, snapper, halibut). At this time I was very unsatisfied even though
my body worked pretty well (I put on muscles with very little training and
no fat and had I never before experience stamina). I had big SAD binges
from time to time eating ridicules big amounts of cooked (about 5+ big
portion of an cooked eater) feeling very good especially the next day. I
remember one binge after 1 month strictly instincto and slowly increasing
unsatisfaction where I eat everything of junk that I could get hold on. In
the fitness test the next day I reached exceptional good results let alone
the joy I felt in my body after an increasing depression that came along
with the unsatisfaction. After I ate meat kind of regularly (I had some
pounds of deer from Ohio) I never had the strong desire to eat cooked or at
least that ridicules amounts.
BTW,  the last SAD-trips during the last 1.5 years were no binges and did
not have the effect as descibed above. The last exception last October was
not a binge I did not feel any need for cooked or whatever. But my wife who
is instincto too with more or less regularly exceptions talked me into
eating some nice fish dish in a very luxurious restaurant in Portugal. The
following night was hell. I couldn't sleep at all and the next day I felt
very weak and had stomach cramps which I had regularly before I started the
raw and thought they would never come back.


>But my wonderment is really this: today's instinctos eating only the
>highest quality wild foods supposedly end up eating less than 10% animal
>foods (or grow tumors :/) or so they say. The latest reported percentage of
>animal foods in hunter-gatherer cultures is some 65%! Now none of those
>cultures are all-raw (the closest probably being, ironically, the Eskimos
>at 90+% animal foods ???).=20

Seems like to me that we are pretty adjustable to the foods that are
available as long as we are gently adapted we can buffer an shit in amounts
pretty well. Even chimps don=92t eat the described average diet. Let me give
you some numbers from one graph from Goodalls "The chimpanzees of Gombe". I
don't have the original but only the graph in an German book. There were
several groups of chimps (about10) whit different number of group members
(numbers for 1979):
fruit   45 - 75 %
leaves  20 - 40 %
blossoms          0 - 15 %
seeds     0 - 10 %
insects   0 - 20 %
meat      0 -   5 %=20
galls     0 -   5%
misc.     0 -   7%

I don't want go to into more to explain all the different combinations is
just to illustrated that the diets are pretty different in amounts in
different groups some groups eating only fruit, leaves and insects and
other all of the items above. The numbers are still average over there
groups not considering the individuals, neither sequence of food etc. etc.
I guess if the chimps had more RAF available easily that had eaten more.
Who knows.

Also Eskimos eat large variety of RAF mainly ver fatty stuff (polar animals
 have higher fat content than moderate climate ones). In summer the have
problems to eat fat. One guy said he had to imaging to sit in a snow storm
to get it down. (source: German book from 1959 that pretty thoroughly tries
to sort out sound information from here say)


>BTW, it sounds like you eat plenty of RAF, but would prefer not to (more
>comfy with almonds, etc.) Is this the conditioning of your former raw diets
>or is it just cheaper ;)

I realized when I stay with RAF only as protein for say longer than a week
or two get into deep trouble and it gets more and more difficult to eat RAF
with enjoyment. My body somehow does not work properly. I have kind of
athletes food, sweating, sometimes weakness. But  these symptoms disappear
quickly, sometimes with just  a few almonds one or two avos, a coconut or
so. After some plant protein I can eat RAF again and fell strong and clear
the next morning. My guess is it is the fat rather than the protein because
I was pretty much up for fat lately (avos, seeds, bacon D pure fat, fatty
fish). Maybe if I had greater variety especially of fatty seafood and
shellfish the need for plant protein would be lower.
The other way around, staying only with plant protein is even worse. Trying
to stay with nuts and avos for a while makes me strong joint pain which is
relieved with eggs again. It seams the right combination and the sequence
is the key. Eggs smell very strong like cake or so after a few days with
almonds but loose the smell even though I go some days totally with
protein. I is not that easy: just go without protein for a while and than
you need it again. That is something that totally differs from all the diet
approaches using any kind of tables. Every protein is different and only be
partially  replace by an other protein (some are very close though).


>Do you hear much talk about
>"unblocking" for a particular food over there? I remember hearing of an
>instincto women who just couldn't enjoy durian until it was suggested that
>she eat some lightly cooked (160F) after which she VERY much enjoyed raw
>durian--that is, she was "unblocked" for it. Sounds interesting to me.

My experience with unblocking is that you might need something totally
different thing (i.e. some new molecules). Some important part could be
herbs considering the many different foods available in nature. Just minute
amounts of substance might be sufficient to break an tolerance. I ate an
onion the day before yesterday which kind of gave me something that I was
missing for a long time. Even though I was pushing to the limit (tears in
my eyes) I did not have any gas as usually when I ate some raw onion when I
was a SAD eater. Maybe eating some less would be even more beneficial.
Burgers included the phyto aroma therapy, you might already heard of, into
instincto. If you feel unsatisfied or unwell just smell herbs (preferable
freshly cut but cold dried will do). If the smell is pleasurable keep
smelling and if your saliva starts to run eat some of it. In most cases
smelling is enough. It provides several molecules per body cell (maybe some
thousand or more, I have forgotten the exact number Burger gave in his
course).
In my opinion there are still a lot of things out there to discover. Some
of them you might need only once in your lifetime but you need them. Other
might be there are needed by your children, or their children........?
Stop rambling here.
I enjoyed reading your posts in the archive very much even though they are
sometimes a little bit long.

Start enjoying the list too.

BTW, I was close to join in 1995 when I started my study at the UofA in
Tucson, AZ but was put off by the name veg-raw. Many articles I read in the
archive just remind of the salad-nut-fruit-time (self intro still to
follow) I just overcame. At this time I wanted to tell  every body about
instincto and was surprised about the negative reaction from my
counterparts. An experience most of raw eaters had have. Fortunately I am
developing (not always as fast as I wished to and sometimes even in wrong
direction or just shortcutting?). It seems the list can be a step in this
development.

Glad to be part of this virtual raw food world. Maybe it becomes more real
with time.

Mike

Mike Mueller
e-mail: [log in to unmask]