Roy said:
>On an unrelated issue, I just heard over the instincto
>grapevine that Zephyr/Ano was really ill a few weeks
>ago.

Ano came down with a serious case of trichinosis probably due to eating
a raw mongoose on HI. As Denis pointed out last week predators in the
wild more often than not are infested with parasites and are best not
eaten raw. Ano is in slow recovery due to good medical help.
Trichinosis can be fatal if left untreated.

Denis said:
>From a purely evolutionary point of view we are  much more adapted  to
> marine (what I refered to simplistically as "fish" in my earlier post
>) and insect diet , than to a  mammal diet. [ if there is some truth
>in my logic, fish should be likewise an acceptable diet for most
>terrestrial arnivores/omnivores ...]

It would seem to me that a couple of million years as omnivorous
primates would largely erase this history, and unless you subscribe to
The Aquatic Ape Theory, before 40.000 years ago I think that our
consumption of fish was quite limited. From observing aboriginal
people, consumption of insects seems to have stayed with us as a
supplement to our diet throughout our development - except for maybe in
very marginal areas like the Australian Interior where I could imagine
insects and larvae might be the mainstay of the diet.

>For the same reason, but to a more pronounced
>extent i guess,  we are  more adated to eating birds and herbivorous
>mammals than to eating carnivorous mammals.  Keeping that in mind, one
>will approach very cautiously the  eating of carnivorous mammals ( as
>a side mention, carnivorous animals are natural  receptacle for all
>sorts of parasitic infestations and intoxication borne by their preys
>...)

Prophetic words indeed.

>I would tend to hope, given the incredible delicacy that  sea urchins
>and other seafoods may have added to our ancestors' fare, that
>tropical beaches and shorelines  have been harvested  well before the
>date  you mentionned. The fact that broken  urchin shells are much
>less visible than remains of cup up walrus certainly gives something
>to think about for anthropologists
>versed in epistemology.

Does not a lack of technology fit into the picture somewhere here? As
for the urchin shells I wonder whether they were not just a seasonal
phenomena and whether those grasslands that we supposedly evolved in
were located close to any oceans. That of course leaves us with lakes.

>Cases of perfectly instinctive overeating by non human animals with
>deleterious consequences on vitamin absorption include reptiles,  free
>ranging as well as  captive. Water snakes and crocodiles that feed too
>much on prey animals containing the enzyme thiaminase, found in a
>variety of fishes, have been reported to be affected by vitamin B1
>deficiency, on account of the destructive power of this enzyme on this
>particular vitamin. "There are flaws even in Nature".  Neither
>overeating nor farting are a privilege of human beings.

Maybe the snakes and crocodiles were overeating in an attempt to make
up for deficiencies in their feed. I wonder how much the health of
animals in "the wild" has deteriorated since man began cultivating and
polluting the planet like he has in recent years. I guess we will never
know.

>3) There are no guarantees in life. Wild animals often die of disease,
>despite eating a completely natural, raw diet in the wild. So too,
>even the most conscientious raw fooder can get sick. A raw foods diet
>does not guarantee good health (whether physical or mental)!

Wild animals usually get killed before they get a change to exhibit or
die from a disease. And if they do it is extremely rarely from any of
the degenerative diseases that plague mankind.

Jeffrey said:
>This is quite true, and there is actually quite abit of evidence to
>back it up.  One specific area in which this has been studied quite
>extensively is in relation to Cystic Fibrosis.  These patients must
>receive Pancreatic Enzyme supplements to survive, and quite abit of
>research and money has been going on  for quite some time into the
>development of special coatings and enzymes that are resistant to
>digestion in the stomach.  If you were to do a search in this area,
>you would find what you are looking for.

Jeffrey, welcome to the list.  The text above and the text beneath seem
to contradict each other. Which gives?

>Also, If you missed my posts on digestion on the other raw list, you
>would see that only a small percent of protein digestion actually
>occurs in the stomach, and mainly that of breaking polyeptides down
>into smaller peptides. This is only a preliminary stage for true
>protein digestion that takes place in the small intestine.  The
>enzymes are destroyed in the stomach, because this initial phase of
>digestion renders the enzymes inactive and unusable. However, it is
>still possible to have an allergic reaction to any of the remaining
>smaller peptide molecules that pass from the stomach into the small
>intestine.


Jeffrey continues:
>Also they tested enzymes for activity after they had soaked in
>simulated gastric fluid(SGF). Most preparations did pretty well, but
>one formulation (a generic by Rugby) had ZERO activity after one hour
>in SGF. This article did not address resent problems and reports of
>colonic strictures associated with mega doses of high dose enzyme
>formulations. Although this article was published recently, most of
>the work writing it was probably done before these problems became a
>hot topic. This paper was funded by the CF Foundation and NIH. The
>address for reprints is: Leslie Hendeles, PharmD, University of
>Florida Health Science Center, P.O. Box 100486, Gainsville, FL
>32610-0486.

I will send for the reprint.  Thanks!

Ellie said:
>I think I have some good news about sugar which is also related to the
>attraction to fruitarianism. Aajonus Vonderplanitz in We Want To Live
>(Carnelian Bay Castle Press, to order call 1-800-BOOKLOG ), advocates
>both large amounts of raw fat and raw unheated (uncooked does not mean
>unheated) honey. Aajonus had remission from cancer in 238 out of 239
>cases usually within three months with high raw fat diets. I was very
>impressed.

I am impressed as well. Though we must bear in mind that no follow-up
has to my knowledge been done on these people and that what we have is
second-hand anecdotal information at best. I would love to hear from
some of them and hear from the horse's mouth how they are doing. In
fact, I will contact Aajonus soon and try and get some of these clients
of his to join our list. Also, I have met another practitioner in town
who advocates a modified version of Aajonus's program. He uses flower,
oxygen, homeopathic and mineral remedies as an adjunct to the RAF, and
I expect I will pay him a visit soon. He presently has 30 cancer case
under his care and claims they are all in remission.

>But I am also interested in the sugar part. He finds large
>amounts of honey heal the pancreas and diabetes disappears. From my
>studies of the nervous system, I am convinced that the desire for
>'sugar' (as in fruits) is partly a craving for stimulants (all toxins
>are stimulants), which is what refined and altered sugar molecules
>are, and also a needed desire for natural sugar to replace the stored
>up 'mutant' sugars, to borrow  Aajonus' term.

The first part is clear to me the second one I am not sure of.  Until
some of these people who have healed their pancreases speak up about
how they are now completely over their addictions to sugar, I will
remain a skeptic.


Chet said:
>>> BTW, I am heading out on a 30-40 day backpacking trip this summer
>>> and I am looking for some type of complete food that I will be able
>>> to sustain myself on.

Pat said:
>Don't forget your TVP,dried fruit and nuts!!

I would  leave out the TVP as it contains MSG and add some dehydrated
RAF instead.  According to Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. author of
"Excitotoxins - The Taste That Kills" MSG along with aspartame and
other food additives are what he calls exictotoxins killing off neurons
in the brain causing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and
Lou Gerig's disease.

Jean-Loius said;
>Mantak Chia has written books about Taoist methods.
>But what is the relation with raw food (except that there is probably
>an overlapping between "Chivorous" and "Breatharian" in Tom's
>nomenclature)?

Not to worry.  It is OK to go off topic now and then. Especially when I
initiate it. ;-)

>At 1:30 p.m., I felt an urgent need to go to... the toilet. It was
>really liquid, almost as fluid as milk (but not really the same
>color).And I returned 4 or 5 times to the toilet during the next 3
>hours.Possible hypothesis :

My guess is that you were low in the enzymes needed to digest the milk
but that as soon as your body adjusts to this new food, it should not
be a problem if the milk is raw.

Kirt said:
>I'm not sure I understand your confusion, David. "Instinct" as used by
>instincto-therapy refers to sensory (smell and taste) attraction
>regardless of visual cues and other neo-cortical "input".

Maybe a distinction should be made between instincto-therapy and
instinctive eating.  I know for quite a few instinctive eaters the
visual sight or a fond memory of eating a certain food will make a food
attractive and that the smell and taste are just cues used to determine
the quality of the food and to decide when satiation levels have been
reached.

>smell and taste (or even simply an "interesting" smell and taste) why
>shouldn't your cat be attracted? All sorts of "wild" animals are
>attracted to to food remnants in garbage dumps, both raw and
>denatured. The trouble is perhaps not so much "accounting for the
>attraction as a function of instinct" as much as it is deciding if a
>food is usefully capable of interacting with one's smell and taste in
>a health-giving way.

So animals eat denatured  foods sometimes just to pig out and sometimes
to reap certain health benefits.
The fact that wild animals eat denatured foods with such ease only
supports the instincto position that foods have to be whole and natural
for the instinctual process to kick in.

>Cheese (and other dairy) may be too denatured to be eaten
>instinctively for most people. Perhaps for cats as well. Nevertheless,
>if you cat has eaten only beef (and no organs) it may be on the prowl
>for many important nutrients (including fats) which may be why she is
>so very attracted to raw cheese. Or maybe cheese is so attractive
>because it is so denatured. Either way there is no need to "account"
>for the attraction. Sour cream and onion flavored potato chips are
>often attractive to folks and critters, no?

A denatured or unnatural food like cheese might in a pinch serve a
nutritional purpose for a cat though if available in abundance without
the instinctual stops it might soon begin to look like the Cheshire
Cat.

>I would not be surprised if birds enjoy (and thrive) on raw cream.
>Conversely, I would not be surprised if it messed them up because the
>fat was not "properly digestable". In the former case instinct is
>useful in interaction with a "natural" food, and in the latter case it
>fails in interaction with an "unnatural food", one that birds never
>before had much access to before human neo-cortical manipulation. In
>other words, the question isn't really why would a bird's be attracted
>to raw cream, but whether or not the attraction is useful. The bird is
>in no position to inhibit its attraction, whereas humans are.

So what starts off fulfilling a very legitimate need can easily end up
as a major addiction for our feathered friends.  I am surprised that
the bird's immune system does not reject the denatured food in the same
way that a horse depleted of protein rejects a piece of cooked meat. I
guess there are limitations to every rule.

>Defining the set of useful foods is confused by many factors,
>including the great differences between the wild paleolithic foods we
>evolved consuming and the foods available to us today; the great
>individual variation in relish, tolerance, and utility of even high
>quality raw foods and even more so with "borderline raw foods" such
>raw dairy, fermentated concoctions, "live" supplements, etc.; the
>generations of denatured food consumption of our ancestors and the
>resultant, albeit incomppletel, natural selection of our genetics; and
>especially the doule-edged sword of neo-cortical intervetion--without
>which we would be unable to repress our attraction to denatured foods
>(hose denaturation is also directly attributable to our neo-cortex),
>but also without which we would be unable to secure much quality raw
>foods in modern circumstances.

What throws me off is that an animal in the wild supposedly is very
attuned to its nutritional needs through its ancestry of sometimes
millions of years of uninterrupted instinctive eating.  So when it
encounters denatured food one would think that despite the fact that
these foods taste delicious and give no taste stops that some natural
intelligence in the animal would say, " hey this stuff might taste
really good but it does not really satisfy my nutritional needs.


>A newly-bred food, X, is now available. It is wildly attractive, akin
>to durian in pleasure. Some instinctos (Group A) find it has no taste
>change to speak of, some find mild/late taste changes (Group B), and a
>very few (say 2%--Group C) find it has a reliable taste change. Should
>Group A eat X but eat only neo-cortically fixed amounts? If Group A
>does so, and finds it healthly to do so, are they any longer
>considered "instinctos"? If Group B eats "too much" X by following
>their senses only, and finds it unhealthy to do so, are they
>considered "stupid"? If Group C is highly vocal about how they
>experience the "real stop" because they are 1] an instincto Guru, or
>2] so very Pure, or 3] pay special attention to principles of
>instinctive LIFE, etc. and finds it healthy to do so, is Group C
>"obnoxious"?

One way to go about it would be for instinctive eaters to leave out any
food of their diet that does not give very distinct and powerful stops
and does not taste absolute to-kill-for delicious. That would probably
eliminate the instincto vice of overeating of fruits.

Bob said:
>MY COMMENT:  Yup sorta seems we humans have already created an
>environment impossible for us to live healthfully in.  NOW, let's have
>some answers, fellow questers-toward-health!!

It is important to eat in a way that does not cause too much stress to
the organism and choose a nutritional program that adapts well to all
the social, psychological and spiritual limitations most of us have. If
a less perfect diet makes us feel better or if a perfect diet keeps us
imprisoned in a rigid, perfectionistic mindset not much has been gained
healthwise in my opinion.

Stefan said:
>Eating mostly fruits and nearly no vegetables drives you into a
>nutritional disbalance which could also be the reason for the
>non-digestion of fruits. Instinctive nutritions says, that you   m u s
>t   eat vegetables to be in balance   e a c h   day! Also low weight
>is caused by eating too much fruit= s. According to instinctive
>nutrition this causes heavy detoxification which reduces your weight.
>Eating more vegetables solves this problem.

Welcome aboard, Stefan!. Aside from tubers most fruits especially the
sweet ones have more calories than vegetables due to less fiber and
higher sugar content. Eating more vegetables, not including seeds and
nuts, will for most people mean loosing weight.

Karl said:
>With many fruits the taste of the skin is very important for
>the instinctive reaction. Oranges, for example: One should
>eat oranges only if the skin tastes so good that it can be
>removed by using only the teeth. Because our ancestors would
>normal have done just that: Smell the fruit, take it in a
>hand and bite into it or skin it with the teeth.

Karl, good to have you aboard too!  Two comments: Oranges have only
been around for a very short time, and I see no contradiction between
instincts and using tools.

David said:
>But now it seems to me that
>there's a lot more involved in instincto-therapy than instinct; that
>is,first I have to understand a great deal about human evolution,
>human and pre-human anthropology, paleobotany, prehistorical climatic
>conditions,etc. before I can trust the wisdom of my taste/smell
>responses. Whew!

I agree it is quite a tall order for the most of us.  And not very
intuitive or instinctive process to boot but as long as it can be done
with an open mind an a non-obsessional attitude, I admire the people
who are able to do all this pioneering work for us.

Best, Peter
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