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Login Here Signup Here Signup using FacebookOK, so, today I was reading the Women’s Health magazine, and I came across a question this lady asked a nutritionist about eating a raw diet, and if it was healthy or not. You can imagine my surprise when the nutritionist answered that eating raw meat and unpastuerized foods was not healthy! I thought, whoa! Did this nutritionist just imply that eating raw meat was part of a raw diet?? So, I wrote her an e-mail and basically told her that I didn’t believe she had done any research regarding the diet, and had she done so, she would’ve discovered that a raw food diet is vegan, and has nothing to do with meat. Low and behold, she wrote me back and stated she had done her research, and that there are raw foodists who are not vegan, but do eat meat! I was a bit surprised! Apparently Carol Alt is one. She had sent me a link regarding it (wikipedia). I’m curious if anyone here was aware of such a thing. Maybe raw vegans are just more verbal about it?
Comments
I heard a story on the news a while back about people eating raw meat. I’ve also heard of people on raw diets who think they’re not getting enough protein so they consume raw eggs. I was pretty shocked when I heard about it also.
That is really odd! In all my research, I’ve never come across raw foodists eating raw meat! In all the websites I’ve gone to, and the cookbooks I have.. I’m just a little shocked actually..
Hi- I don’t like the fact that the reporter was focussing on the raw meat aspect probably for the shock value. Raw meat has a dramatic effect on the general public even though many people eat sushi or steak tartar and don’t think twice about it. I think that probably 95% or more of the raw foodists out there don’t eat raw meat and she should have done her job better by interviewing more than one person or reading a definition out of the dictionary. I wouldn’t put Alt in with raw foodists anyway because she probably isn’t doing it for health or ethical reasons- just to stay thin for bikini jobs. There should be an addition to the definition that includes some kind of ethical aspect because I feel that is the most prevalent commonality among the majority of raw foodists.
Yes there are raw foodists who eat raw meat, myself being one of them. Why do you discount Carol Alt, she is eating a raw diet (including meat) for her health and is a big proponent of telling people to eat raw. Don
I learned about raw after I was eating more vegan and, in the beginning, I thought of raw as only vegan as well. Probably because that is the way I eat. But, actually, there are many raw foodists who aren’t vegan. It is amazing to me that there are so many people interested in raw food, for so many reasons. I think there’s room for a little diversity in the community. A couple similar topics: what does it mean to be raw? and raw cheese.
I think Kandace brings up a really good point. Diversity in any community is vital and certain aspects of raw foods work great for some not for others. Personally, I’m raw/vegan but choose not to eat nuts/seeds much and a nut free raw diet might seem bizarre to many raw foodists. ;-) Each body is individual and sacred. Part of what is so compelling about the raw food ‘movement’ is that at its core it requires each of us to slow down, honor our instincts, and our food sources ( and that might include raw meat for some…)
At the very least if we cast politics and clubbiness aside raw foods are the ticket back to celluar health for all of us!
Peace.
writeeternity -
just because carol Alt eats raw meat it doesnt mean she is not a raw foodist. every one has their needs – she explains this in an article (link below) as well as her health that was deteorating. you should do some research too before you start to judge someone just because of their actions (eating raw meat) or their celebrity status. read the article i posted below and you will have a better understanding.
If one choses to eat raw meat .. let them .. if they dont want to eat meat then thats their choice as well. some are vegan because they cannot stand the idea of animals being hurt .. some do it for health reasons .. we all have our reasons which shouldnt be disregarded.
we should all do what feels best for our own particular body … isnt that why we chose to go raw in the first place?
yes, I know quite a few raw foodists who are meat eaters and have been happily doing so long before the lifestyle entetred into its recent popularity….and although raw animal products are shocking to americans, they are less so to those with a euro backround….raw hamburger, for instance, was a regular item for my family growing up. I love being vegetarian…my body is happy for now.
When I first went raw, I began eating 100% vegan (with the exception of honey). Now I eat raw egg yolks for B-12 and raw milk cheeses once in a while. I feel a lot healthier, more energetic, and more grounded when I include those foods than I do when I eat raw vegan exclusively. I don’t do it for protein, but (for me) there was something my body needed that I wasn’t getting from raw vegan alone and adding the egg yolks helped me out tremendously. Raw vegan works for a lot of raw foodies, so I think it all depends on your body.
I was a vegetarian and then vegan before moving into a more raw foods lifestyle, so raw meat doesn’t sound very good to me. But to each his own, right?
I’m so glad to see so many people who are open to everyones choices in this group. My boyfriend eats meat and says that he is “raw” too based on the criteria here. He doesn’t like to eat chickens because he had some as pets but he does eat ham or pork every chance he gets which bothers me because pigs are very high functioning animals. I am more willing to accept people eating clams, scallops, or conch because they don’t have eyes or attributes of mammals. He also eats steak. So when people say they eat meat that bothers me because why don’t they specify that they eat raw cows, raw tunas, or whatever animal it is. It’s really down playing what the animal is when it’s just referred to as “meat”.
It’s easy to say- well I eat sushi but is that an animal or a little strip of protein surrounded by nori and avocado to you. From what I have read lately tuna is high in mercury, and bad for pregnant women and children- so how is this healthier for someone. I also read that a businessman offered anyone a reward of $5,000 to bring in a commercial chicken that didn’t have a cancerous tumor in it- and noone could. So how is this healthier for someones body. I also read that we will have fished out the whole ocean in 10 years- so fish won’t be available anymore. How does this make sense?
I really wish the raw foodists would differentiate themselves from meat eaters because of the worldwide environmental devastation being caused by the meat – animal harvesting\butchering industry. It’s hard to believe that with so much information out there very few people are listening.
I am working on being more raw, a vegan diet has never worked for me, so if I do go all raw, it will be including raw meat. Besides the Carol Alt books, there is a raw food book by an author named Kymythy who cured herself of cancer on a raw diet including meat. Most raw meat dishes are “cooked” in some sort of citrus-based marinade to kill harmful bacteria, etc. While I do love the environment, I love myself just as much, and a vegan diet made me very ill.
Yes, I’ve heard of raw foodists that eat meat. In UK we saw a US Wife Swap and one of the families were raw fooders. Got all excited until found that they ate raw meat…! Trust that programme to pick a very atypical raw food family for shock value. I think if people in general are going to eat meat, then yes they should eat it raw as at least the amino-acids won’t have been subjected to heat damage. However, for most people, the idea of eating raw flesh is abhorrent, and I think that’s the clue that we shouldn’t be eating it. However, many raw fooders aren’t vegans, much as some vegans would like to think so. I eat raw honey, and 1 pt of raw goats’ milk each week, in the months when my supplier says there is surplus from the kids’ requirements. I would rather have my B12, Vitamin A and iodine from this source than follow the large number of vegan raw fooders that take a supplement.
writeeternity I think its important to differentiate between being a rawvegan and a rawfooder. I eat lokal raw salmon once in a while, because I like it and it works for me. I also think that farming and buthchering is inhumane and unsustainable, but its also very unsustainable getting durian flown in from thailand. The trouble with information is that the internet is full of tings that are manipulated and untrue. It would ofcourse help if people wrote some sort of referance to the things they state(where did you read yours?) but its rare. I think that many people drown in the infostream but some manage, and that more and more see that we have to act now to save our planet.
I do respect people’s right to eat what they want. However due to the state of the planet and the world population’s health, we all must be aware of the real and true effects on our health and the planet of eating animal products.
Our intestines are four times as long as a carnivoire’s. When a cat eats meat it is passed through her system very quickly. This is because dead meat + warm wet insides = poisonous decomposting/rotting/putrifying inside our bodies.
When we eat meat it takes 17-24 hours for it to work it’s way through our system. That’s a long time for it to rot in our guts which are permable, we poison ourselves with it.
When I put out my cat’s raw chicken on a warm day, within 6 hours larvae appears. So in your gut, goodness knows what is crawling out of it and into you.
Yes our oceans are being fished to death, and fish farming is polluting them also. We could lose the whole oceanic ecosystem if it isn’t stopped soon.
We get oxygen from the ocean flora and fauna, what would the world be like without that?
Cattle farming is wiping out rainforest as people clear trees to farm cattle. These methods of clearing forest and shrubland occur all over the world and destroys our precious topsoil, causing floods and turning once lush vegetation into desert.
It takes gallons and gallons of water to produce one burger, water we cannot afford to use goes to feed farm animals.
Most of the plant foods produced in the world go to feeding farm animals. And there are people starving all over the world whille we feed up our pigs and cattle, needlessly.
People talking about being “green” talk about car emissions and insulating their lofts, when simply going vegan, or better still, raw vegan would do far, far more for the world.
This is a brief explanation of the consequences of eating animal products, there is much, much more I could say. There’s a page on our website with further info: http://www.purelyraw.com/whyvegan.htm Or check out http://www.ravediet.com – doctors who promote a vegan lifestyle.
Zoe Im pretty sure that the average humanbeing takes more than 24 hours to process a steak, considering all the yucky stuff in their intestines. (good references : )) I completely agree with you. It would be so much better if everyone just went vegan. In my case I can feel that my deisre/need/whatever for the raw fish deminish in time. It might be a transition thing who knows. I feel that one of the things we can do in the rawfooder/vegan community is to buy organic and locally produced. Somehow I find it strange that people talk about pollution and sustainability and still live of exotic fruit. I know thats not everybody, and that some of you are fortunant anough to live in places where mango, banana and pineapple is local(grrr lucky lucky) But if the fruit is imported the co2 emmision is pretty harsh on just one load of fruit.
I agree tha we all should eat less meat and more organic. These stock yards pollute the ground water causing many streams and rivers to be undrinkable due to e-coli and other contaminant in the water. Not only does it pollute rivers but also out underground water reserves especially those that have well water as their only source of drinking water. We have a stock yard about 5 or 10 miles down the road and when the wind hits just right the whole town smell like old cow urine and feces. It is sickening and air polluting. They (stockyard) are out of city limits but I am still looking into trying to do something about it. We even converted out triels bikes to use a cleaner burning fuel and battery power to help try to lessen our pollution contributions.
Anyone ever read “fast food nation”? My husband who loves meat and would eat some every weekend with his family won’t touch it now (my in-law is going insane, tee hee) after reading that book. It’s mostly the industry’s impact on the PEOPLE, not even just the animal, that’s shocking and painful. I didn’t find the facts about animals and sickness very shocking at all because… I don’t think you need to worry about E-coli and salmonella infections when your inner terrain isn’t hospitable to disease… But the amount of violence and horrible suffering that’s being put into the meat industry, from every aspect of it… Including the people involved… It’s so horrible. Also… When raw foodists eat meat (paleo, instinctive eating, etc) they tend to mostly focus on game, not farmed meat. Farmed meat is VERY harmful, it has too high of a fat percent, and will contain antibiotics and steroids and other scary things. While I’m vegan and can’t stomach the thought of animal flesh, I do think that some people might be more adapted to a higher protein diet, and would be hard pressed to get enough calories just from eating a lot of greens. That is just my opinion though… :c)
That book is soo good. Really informative. I live in a country where there are strict policies on food safety, so the scenario is a bit unfamiliar for me. But I have family in the states and when they read that book they were chocked.
I believe in the essintial need for diversity on any forum. Certainly all are welcome to choose their own diet and to discuss any aspect of it, here on GoneRaw. But I would not want my silence on this issue to act as an approval of eating animal foods. I have done much research on this particular topic and come up with the following…
Any loss of energy, stamina or health after cutting out animal foods or increase in such after adding animal foods to your diet is strictly a placebo effect caused by the prolific belief in our need for animal foods as a source of vitality and strength. In modern times the animal foods industry has capitlaized on this long held belief and fill our current generations with brainwashing of animal foods as a needed part of a healthy diet. This brainwashing has increased the Placebo effect of animal foods.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no evidence to suggest that animal foods improve or even support health. This was put to the test recenty in the US court when the dairy council was forced to stop the “Milk, It does a body good.” campaign because they could not prove any beneficial effects of eating or drinking dairy foods. You may remember the ads.
Many of the strongest animals on the planet are all vegan, gorillas, horses, etc. There are small groups of apes that eat meat and they are much weeker and live shorter life spans. Countless strength and enduance tests have been conducted and the results are always the same, vegan is the best diet for athletes. Carl Lewis the fastest man ever (without steroids) was of course a Vegan when he set all his records.
Eating animal foods has killed more people than: all the wars, natural disasters and car accidents of the twentieth century added together. Our bodies make all the cholesterol we need. The only food source of cholesterol is animal foods. Plant foods contain no cholesterol.
It’s simple, the extra cholesterol clogs our veins and arteries restricting the flow of blood. Restrict blood flow to the brain and you’ll have a stroke. Restrict blood flow to the heart and you’ll get Heart Disease. Restrict blood flow to your cells and you’ll get Cancer.
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the UK and US. Heart disease kills one in five men and one in six women. The number two killer of course is Cancer. A recent study of autopsies shows that 80% of those over 40 have some form of cancer.
We’ve been taught that we desperately need animal protein, but nothing could be further from the truth. Protein deficiency caused by diet is only found in cases of severe starvation. Many plant foods have protein, and plant protein won’t kill you. Both spinach and broccoli have near twice the protein of beef. A diet of nothing but potatoes will give you enough protein.
In the west our health problems are caused by excess not deficiency. Don’t worry about what you are not eating, beware of what you are eating.
There has never been a single case of calcium deficiency from diet in human history. We’ve been taught we need the calcium in dairy products to build strong bones. The opposite is actually true. The animal protein in dairy products makes our blood pH acidic. Our bodies then draw calcium from our bones to balance our blood pH. Yes, that means that milk actually causes bone loss. Osteoporosis is most common in cultures that consume the most animal foods.
Never before have we eaten so much animal fats and protein. Animal foods like meat, dairy and fish only became affordable in the 20th century. In the last half of the century we’ve doubled our meat consumption to an average of 105 kilos per person per year.
We’ve switched from a plant-based diet to an animal based one. This was the biggest diet change in human history and was followed by a huge increase in cancer, heart disease and diabetes. These were previously the diseases of the rich, who could afford to eat a lot of animal foods.
We now grow far more food to feed farm animals than we eat ourselves. 87% of agricultural land is used to raise the animals we eat. Farm animals consume 80% of our corn, 80% of our grain and 95% of our oats. We spend more time, money and resources fattening the animals we eat than we do feeding humans that are actually starving.
Finally, we just aren’t carnivores. We’re not even omnivores. All carnivores have short guts, through which meat is eliminated before it putrefies. Human intestines are 3 times the length of carnivores. Our guts are even much longer than an omnivore
Chris. I agree with you and I find that the take Viktoria Boutenko has on things is optimal. I cant function on fruit alone, I need the greens. Im definently not a fruitarian. Other than that I always wondered about the food intake of the eskimos/inuits. They have virtually lived on meat for hundreds of years but its only when their diet got full of processed foods, that developed degeneterative diseases like cancer and heart disease. A danish scientist have done research in the very low numbers of heartdisease/low colesterol in secluded inuits and I find it somewhat interesting but also very puzzeling.
I do believe some people are in fact “protein type” (I guess that’s how you can call it) and require more high protein diet. It’s possible those people would need more fat. I guess it could be a racial thing, originating from different regions? I’m not sure. But either way, the best way to go is to eat whatever you’re drawn to, aside from addiction of course. You can’t say “I’m drawn to chips and beer”... That is obviously just a craving and doesn’t mean anything. But some people thrive on a mostly fruit diet and feel the best on that (I know I can practically mono-eat fruit for days and feel wonderful, and I’ve only been raw for a month!) and some people are turned off by the taste and texture of fruit and want game meat, nuts, greens. The meat industry is a dirty disgusting industry that has absolutely nothing natural about it and if anyone plans on eating raw meat would have to find a different source for it… Maybe some people can tolerate raw meat and digest it better at smaller quantities than being pushed by the meat industry? I’m not sure.
Chriscarlton I have a question for you..I am a raw vegan, and also an exercise physiologist. As I work with athletes, including myself, who are raw..I find it incredible challenging. Trying to maintain mass of a runner is challenging for sure. It seems as though the muscle is deteriorating and there strength has decreased. They are still strength training, and seeing gains in amount of work they can do, but their explosive power is off.
As a vegan, I don’t want to have them include any animal products in their diets, and b/c they have limited budgets, and travel a lot I feel stuck. I agree that protein intake may be a result of the placebo affect, but based on how their body is reacting to these changes, I am fearful for them.
any thoughts?
rfoodie. Try tjecking out Brendan Brazier, hes a triathlete, vegan and highraw as far as I understand.
Or http://www.fruitarianfitness.com/ He says that losing your muscle mass is a par of cleansing, and after detox is completely done, you’ll start building healthier stronger muscles.
I agree there is a lot of stigma in the US about eating raw meat. Just to note that people who eat a raw diet and include meat are more often than not eating local organic meat. I know just from eating a vegan diet when people learned about it they seemed shocked and all “how can you live?” I’ve learned no matter what you choose to eat the more important part is being educated in your choices and understanding the effects that the foods we eat have on our bodies.
There are so many documented cases of raw vegan athletes who perform way above and beyond their capabilities that they could when they ate an animal based diet. See Doug Graham’s web site for many testimonials: www.foodnsport.com
As for consuming raw meat, I feel that people who eat meat should be the ones who capture and kill the animal as well as clean it out. Nature has not provided humans with the tools to kill animals so we leave this gruesome task to the butchers and the factory farms. They know that if the reality of death were hidden from consumers their sales will improve. They are very successful at that, even the words they choose are chosen to hide this fact. Instead of calling it cow or bull they call it beef, a nice word that doesn’t remind us of the peaceful grazing animals we see in the fields, pork for pigs and poultry for chicken. As for health, the best choices would obviously be wild game and not anything that was raised on a farm.