Miora:
>My cat will not touch cooked meat, she will only eat raw meat. What does she
>know, that I don't?

The premise of instincto is that cooking makes a food un-original,
different than what our species evolved on. The problem is that our species
wasn't our species before it had mastered fire (probably, kinda, maybe,
debateable). Having had eaten 100% raw for over eight years--including
considerable RAF--I certainly believed that raw food was better. Period.

Now after experimenting with rare meat (and some steamed veggies) I am not
so sure. Perhaps at best it is a double-edged sword kinda thing, and we are
left not _perfectly_ adapted to raw or cooked. (The failure rate of 100%
instincto is well over 90%--it should be much higher if it is our ancestral
diet, even given the cultural/psych barriers instinctos encounter.)
Avoiding grains is probably more important than eating sushi, but I must
admit great curiosity about any paleo-dieter who experiments with an
all-raw or mostly-raw version. I consider that I "backed off" a bit into
slightly cooked foods from the most extreme paleo-diet of all (instincto)
and have been delighted with the results (eating much less fruit, feeling
stronger, etc.). It would be useful to hear about any results of
paleo-dieters eating more raw and what they find its effects may or may not
be. (Don Wiss is the only one I know making a conscious effort to eat more
raw on this list.) Will our experiences "meet" at the 80% raw mark in
general? Or is 50% best for many people? I have no idea.

>Also, why do I feel a revulsion for raw meat? I want to know how people do
>it, and what meats a person would eat raw.

The easiest (and least grusome) way is to make a raw jerky. Just place thin
strips of meat (brisket with the fat works nicely) on a wire mesh in front
of a fan at room temperature. Or simply sear your steaks--the trouble here
is that unless you have a source of hung/aged meat it may be a pretty tough
chew unless you get the more expensive cuts (and even they are much more
tender when aged).

>Why does cooked salmon taste
>great and raw salmon is simply unimaginable for me at this point? Does raw
>salmon taste good?

Cooked salmon tastes "ruined" to me--it just depends on what you're used
to. Interestingly, most instinctos prefer aged meat and fish over fresh.
Sashimi salmon (besides probably being farmed instead of wild--wild is far
superior) has a mild, delicate kinda rich flavor--same with tuna. But cut a
fatty fillet of wild salmon and "dry" it a couple days (as described above
for jerky) and you have a greasy, dripping, treat comapareable only to
bacon. Boston Mackerel fillets in October age nicely as well.

>Should we be eating all of our vegetables  raw?

The trouble is the taste-change I mentioned as a property of raw foods
eaten alone, one at a time, unmixed, unspiced. Sit down with a head of
cauliflour or brocolli and you may not be able to eat much with
pleasure--relative to steaming it and dressing it with olive oil like a
good paleo-dieter should ;) Perhaps the bitter taste of veggies is trying
to protect us from an overload of naturally-occuring "pesticides" or other
substances which would not benefit us in larger amounts. Perhaps cooking
neutralizes these substabces and makes more of what's good in broccoli
available to the digestion. I don't know. Besides celery and romaine, most
of the veggies I eat are actually fruits (tomatoes, cukes, red peppers,
etc.).

This taste-change business has also been my problem with raw animal foods.
The salmon mentioned above can taste _great_ (theoretically meaning your
body _needs_ it) but may just as easily taste horrible (theoretically
meaning your body doesn't need it). Raw foods have much more variable
tastes than cooked foods and are thus less "reliable". Whereas, you can
almost surely sit down to some BBQed salmon tonight for dinner and find
pleasure, counting on the best raw wild aged salmon could easily prove
frustrating--sometimes it tastes great; sometimes not...

For kicks sometime, try some sashimi at a sushi bar. You may be surprised
at how delicate the flavor is. And how drastically different raw tuna is
from canned. Just that one example keeps me aware of the difference between
raw and cooked. _Something_ may be lost/changed/modified in cooking, but as
to how detrimental that is: who knows since the area is rarely studied by
hard researchers. Frustrating black hole in food science...

And I would second Jean-Loius's mention of the searchable raw-food archives
as a source of much info on raw animal foods...try RAF as a search-string
for starters.

Cheers,
Kirt



Secola  /\  Nieft
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