axel:
>To show my great self-control  :-), I will ask only _one_ question:

Very impressive! I know how you feel. ;)

>"advanced RAF": does it imply that the RAF part of our diet was originally
>(I know, I know, what is an original diet?) provided by scavenger practices,
>instead of by "man the mighty hunter" methods? You also say that for you
>fresh meat tends to taste not so good, what makes sense if the above is true.

"Advanced" just means that it is not likely to interest a "beginner". I
think Bruno Cromby uses the term for such foods, including fresh insects,
moldy coconuts, rotten crabs, etc. as well as other aged RAFs.

Fresh RAFs can taste very good indeed when you have a taste for them. I am
just saying that aged RAFs are _stronger_ tasting, so if you has a taste
for, say, beef, fresh beef might taste good and aged beef might taste
great. (and the opposite: if you don't have a taste for it fresh beef would
taste bad and aged beef worse!) And, yes, this does support the idea of
scavenging as the precusor to hunting, but there are other issues at work:

1] Lions, for instance, are known to eat the abdominal organs of their kill
right away and hauling the carcass (mostly muscle now) back to home base.
It might be shared immediately, but there is some mention from observers of
the carcass being "aged" for a day or more (in tropical savanah temps!)
before the muscle is eaten. Leopards have been seen to store carcasses in a
tree and come back and eat it a day or more later. The impression one gets
is that these animals are aging their meat.

2] The aging process in meat concerns fats and protiens, but in a way can
be considered analogous to a ripening banana. In a banana hard-to-digest
complex carbs (staches) are converted (ripened) by its own enzymes into
easier-to-digest simple carbs (sugars). We find the ripened banana sweeter
and more melting than a green banana. Indeed if we force ourselves to eat a
green banana which doesn't really appeal we will often get a stomach upset,
or heavy digestion of some sort. Fresh RAF may be similarly harder to
digest than aged (ripened) RAF where the protiens and fats are broken down
by enzymes into smaller proteins (perhaps even to the amino acid level
though I don't know really) and simpler fatty acids. In a sense aged RAF is
predigested as is a ripened banana.

3] Apparently humans on an all meat diet become malnourished eating only
fresh meat. Howell reports in Enzyme Nutrition that the Swede explorer who
lived and ate in the traditional eskimo ways in the early decades of this
century grew very strong on a diet of aged RAF including organ meats (the
eskimo diet). But when he returned to civilization and tried to continue
his high RAF diet he lost weight and strength eating only fresh meats. When
the meat was aged (and organ meats were included) his vigor returned. I
remember reading another report that when eskimos fed their sled dogs only
fresh meat/fish that the dogs lost weight and strength, but thrived (and
gained weight! in the arctic conditions in which they were pulling sleds
for many hours) when the RAF was allowed to get "high" before it was fed to
them--(high meaning aged).

I may have gotten some of the details above wrong (I'm going on memory here
and besides you should never take my or anyone else's word for stuff like
this anyway: look into the situation for yourself) since I do not have the
time to look it all up right now. But whether or not our human ancestors
experienced a time of scavenging (aged) meat before hunting fresh meat,
there are probably reasons to consider that aged meat has an important role
in human nutrition. The biggest one to me being that it tastes great!. We
now (after years of eating aged RAF) don't really like fresh RAF. When we
get some salmon or venison, we might try it right away, but it invariably
tastes bland/boring with a bad texture. I had some salmon today (but not
much--it changed after a couple ounces only) that had "only" been aged 30
hours or so, but usually we don't get into it until after 40-60 hours of
aging. I think we have a new local source of venison and buffalo, but when
we get some meat we will age it and have no expectation of it being very
tasty before aging.

My guess it that the reason fresh RAF may be relatively attractive to
instincto beginners (as it was to us in the early months) is that they are
literally starving for RAF and fresh is "good enough", or perhaps I should
say "the best so far". Sashimi, for instance, may taste pleasant but for
most people it is not a "jump up and down with pleasure" experience--aged
RAF however, can be so. Imagine that you had never had a properly ripened
fruit in your entire life. Then you come across a green banana. You find it
very interesting and attractive to smell and taste and eat some with
pleasure. Later, you discover that a ripe banana tastes much better than an
unripe one and after a time eating spotted yellow bananas the original
appeal that green bananas held is lost: you find them unacceptable relative
to ripe bananas. A similar thing may be happening for us when we approach
RAF after years of their absence in our diets--though the situation is even
more complicated by our previous consumption of cooked AF, which would be
analogous to eating decades worth of cooked unripe bananas.

(Still, there is great variation among individuals and within an individual
over time. Melisa consistently eats bananas that I consider underripe--I
can't even seem to peel them properly, whereas they peel perfectly for
her!! Weird, but still, I maintain, not the intervention of metaphysical
beings ;)  I am sometimes attracted to aged RAF even after she considers it
too far gone. But these are generalizations. Each of us has suprised each
other and ourselves by our occasional attraction to what we usually find
under or overripe. Further, our dying/aging fish often smells
unattractive--though not overbearingly so--when we first wake up in the
morning. But as the day wears on the smell often becomes attractive,
salivatingly so. After eating fruit, aged RAF usually smells less
attractive. And so on: it is variable for individuals. Many people
understandably roll their eyes at the idea that foods may change their
attractiveness by the hour, but it is true in my experience. Take a bite of
celery or cucumber first thing in the morning, then a bite of the same at 9
oclock, then before lunch, then after lunch, mid-afternoon, before and
after supper, and before bed--and then for good measure wake yourself up at
3am and take another bite. You may well experience a bit of what instinctos
experience all the time.)

Indeed cooking can be seen as an (albeit unnatural?) attempt to "age" meat
very quickly: cooked meat is often more tender and strongly-flavored than
fresh raw meat. The knowledge that aged RAF can taste even _better_ than
denatured AF--better than, say, crispy bacon, charbroiled steaks,
deep-fried fish, etc. may sound like science fiction to the uninitiated but
once experienced one is unlikely to get too terribly excited about the
supposed "unnaturalness" of RAF in the human diet. Especially when the
taste changes from wonderful to horrible in the space of two mouthfuls
after a particular/varying amount is eaten. You _know_ you are partaking of
something your body has definate genetic familiarity with and attraction
to. Gone are the days of pretending that a shitload of fruit and some leafy
greens and a couple ounces of sunflower seeds are the tastiest thing since
school cafeteria lunches...;)

My biggest wondering is why folks like Schmid (and even
Wonderplanitz)--both of whom one assumes are very familiar with the role of
aged meat/fish in traditional diets (esp the eskimo diet)--more or less
downplay the issue in their writings. Perhaps it is just their realization
that aged RAF is going to seem even more radical than fresh RAF, and that
their readers are going to have a hard enough time with _any_ RAF, much
less aged RAF.

Cheers,
Kirt

Is someone saving all this "debate" for a compilation someday: "The Veg-Raw
Letters: How A Mailing List Changed Its Name and the Course of Califirnia
Fruit and Nut Rawism Toward the Latter Part of the Second Millenium",
compiled by Sir Lord Ombodhi during his 14th decade on earth from fragments
of his old harddrive discovered which he stumbled across in the root cellar
of his first straw bale house...and published as a series of 3,088 reposts
;)