QuestionHi there,
I appreciate the information on the site and taking the time to put it out there. I am very confused and am trying to figure out what will work best for me. I started the raw meat thing about two months ago and noticed some really great results. Then looking and researching a little further I found Aajonus's material and even had a very expensive consultation with him. The meal plan he laid out for me was not only so detailed that I would be stuck in the kitchen all day but was super expensive..... 350-400 $ a week. I also started to notice a lot of shoulder and joint pain, I believe from the dairy. I am a personal trainer and workout doing gymnastics and handbalancing stuff for up to 4 + hours a day. All of a sudden my shoulders started to ache and my wrists were so tight I couldn't perform things i was use to doing.
I did notice that raw meat and eggs and butter, with a little coconut cream was fine and allowed me recover faster than normal with little to no soreness.
I am now back reevaluating where to go from here. My question is
1) is jerky really ok? AAjonus says that its not an acceptable raw meat food.
2) How many raw eggs to you consume? He suggested I eat 24 a day
3) would you mind sharing a sample daily plan that you eat?
4) How do you use the clay that you mentioned on your site?
5) If i was to eat both cooked and raw meats in a day but not at a single meal is this ok even though not optimal.
Thank you for your time,
I look forward to hearing from you
jared
Answer350 to 400 US dollars a week? That's ridiculous! Aajonus' recommendations to eat dozens of small meals a day are absurd, and involve huge amounts of raw foods by the end of each day. The sheer expense might be OK for the very rich locals living near Aajonus' home in Malibu, but for anybody else, it's just just ridiculous.
Basically, there are several problems with Aajonus' Primal Diet:-
a) The raw dairy problem.This is THE biggest problem on the Primal Diet. First of all there is the issue of food-intolerance/allergy towards raw dairy. Pro-raw-dairy-advocates like to pretend that it is impossible to be allergic to raw dairy, but they are dead wrong. It isn't just that there are so many people with such food-intolerance/allergies towards raw dairy from birth, but there are even more in later life as, when people get ill from SAD diets, their bodies sometimes become so weakened, that they often get extra food-intolerances/allergies to foods that they previously seemed outwardly to tolerate.
Then there is the issue of all those hormones in milk, which are designed to get a calf to grow to adult size within the space of 2 years - all highly unsuitable for humans.
Then there is the issue of the calcium:magnesium ratio in milk. In a more natural palaeo diet, the calcium:magnesium ratio is more like 1:1 or 2:1, given palaeo foods. However, when one adds in dairy(which has a calcium:magnesium ratio of from 7:1 to 12:1 depending on the type of dairy), then the ratio is highly skewed, with too high a ratio of calcium to magnesium, which leads to the blocking of the uptake of magnesium, thus leading to magnesium-deficiency. Magnesium-deficiency, incidentally, leads to things like muscle-cramps :-
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/magnesium/#h4
A number of long-term Primal Dieters actually admitted on the (closed) Primal Diet yahoo group that they deliberately ate lots of raw pumpkin seeds, which are very high in magnesium and low in calcium, as they wanted to avoid any potential problems with magnesium-deficiency as a result of their extensive consumption of raw dairy.
Also, it has been suggested that lactose inhibits absorption of copper into the body if lactose is consumed in large amounts, thus leading to a higher risk of heart-disease:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3357459
Oh, and I've been told that raw dairy in the US is very expensive, so that's another reason to avoid it.
b) The number of slightly processed raw foods in his diet. For one thing, things like coconut cream and raw veggie-juice take quite some time to prepare. Since one of the main selling-points of a raw diet is that one is able to avoid wasting the huge amounts of time SAD-eaters spend cooking their foods, it is a bit absurd to recommend RVAFers to process perfectly good raw foods needlessly.
More to the point, raw veggie-juice and raw coconut cream were not consumed at any stage in the palaeolithic era, so they are not ideal foods for humans - better to eat raw, solid vegetables and raw coconuts, instead. Raw veggie-juice has further problems:- many ex-Primal Dieters have complained that when they consumed raw veggie-juices in great quantities like Aajonus suggested( 1 large pint-glass or more a day), they started suffering health-problems. It has been suggested that these problems occurred because juicing raw veg not only makes the nutrients within the cell-walls more bioavailable to us, but it also makes the antinutrients in raw vegetables more bioavailable as well, thus leading to potential nutritional deficiencies.Eating raw solid veg is, by contrast, not a problem as, without juicing, the antinutrient levels are much lower, and the bland taste of raw, solid veg means one doesn't consume vast amounts of it like with raw veggie-juice(the latter is often sweetened by Primal Dieters to make it more tasty).
c) The constant, small daily meals AV recommends:- First of all, the sheer amount of raw foods he recommends is way too large, anyway. Even worse, many RVAFers have noticed that healing in the body occurs more when the body is at rest rather than when digesting. So constant eating is going to get the body to divert essential resources away from healing towards digestion.
There is a dietary regime called "Intermittent Fasting" which you should read up more about:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting
Many RVAFers such as myself(though not all) have reported experiencing health-benefits by only having just 1 large meal a day. There are 2 versions:- the easier one involves just eating 1 large, raw meal every 20-24 hours, eaten within a 4-hour period. The more difficult one involves alternate-day fasting(ie eating 1 large meal on one day within a 4-hour period, then a whole-day fast, and repeating that 2-day cycle indefinitely). I sort of mix the two when possible, having 1 large meal a day most days, but having whole-day fasts here and there.
d) Raw honey and raw eggs. Many have complained about the excessive amounts AV recommends as regards raw honey and raw eggs. A few RVAFers have noticed that they had food-intolerance/allergy towards eggs and some just could not handle raw honey. When one thinks about it, neither raw honey nor raw eggs would have been frequently found in the wild in palaeo times, given that there was no domestication at the time of either birds like chickens or beekeeping.Best to keep these as occasional treats.
1) A few raw foodists have mild food-intolerance issues even with jerky. These tend to be people whose digestive systems have been severely wrecked by decades on SAD diets, so can't even handle mild processing such as happens with dehydrated jerky or raw, ground meats. That said, most RVAFers do fine with jerky. You'd have to experiment to see how it works for you. That said, one of the benefits of raw food is its higher water-content by comparison to cooked foods, so dehydrated jerky does not sound ideal to me except as an occasional treat, IMO.
2) 24 a day? Again, far too excessive. First of all, there are some RVAFers who have mild food-intolerance/allergy towards eggs, even raw eggs, (though many have no such issues, admittedly). Come to think of it, even Aajonus has admitted that the protein in raw eggs is not as good for rebuilding the body as the protein in raw meats.
There is another point:- some people claim that avidin in raw eggs causes trouble. Avidin is an antinutrient in the raw egg-white which binds with the biotin(vitamin B7) in the yolk of raw eggs, so some people claim that too many raw eggs a day is bad for you. However, most claim that since there is more than enough biotin in the yolk of a raw egg anyway, that a deficiency in biotin could only occur if one eats 24 or more raw eggwhites a day without eating the yolks(there have been 1 or 2 cases of bodybuilders dying from eating vast amounts of just the raw egg-whites each day). Whatever the case, Aajonus-style daily binging on raw eggs is not a good idea, just have them as a useful extra source of raw fat from time to time, but not staple like with raw meats.
3) I change my daily food-intake constantly based entirely on instinct/appetite etc., anyway, and, to be honest, my diet-plan would not be suitable for anyone else, given differing metabolic-rates, different body-sizes etc. But here's a fictional(but reasonably truish) sample:-
Day 1:- 1/2 of a raw wild hare carcass.
Day 2:- 15-30 raw large wildcaught oysters. Plus 1 or 2 bananas.
Day 3:- 1 kilo of raw seafood:- either raw mackerel or raw swordfish or raw kingfish or raw sprats or raw sardines or raw prawns/shrimps.
Day 4:- 20 raw scallops(never ever buy frozen scallops!). Plus 2 or 3 oranges.
Day 5:- 4 kiwis plus 4 bananas.
Day 6:- Whole-day Fast.
Day 7:- 150 raw mussels(which I have to prise from the shells - raw mussels are more for experienced RVAFers as the shells are a hassle to open).
Day 8:- 1 raw lobster or 2 raw crabs. Plus 2 or 3 avocadoes.
Day 9:- 1/2 of a raw grassfed/organic ox liver or ox heart, or some raw lambs' hearts/livers.
Day 10:- Whole Day Fast.
Day 11:- 1 whole organic/grassfed ox tongue.
Day 12:- A plateful of raw grassfed marrow.
Day 13:- 3 raw goose eggs or 6 raw duck eggs or 24 raw quail eggs(quail eggs are tiny). Plus some oranges.
Day 14:- 1 raw, (small) wild mallard duck carcass. Plus some raw heather honeycomb(6 ounces).
Day 15:- 1.2 kilos of raw ground/minced grassfed/organic beef.
Day 16:- 1 kilo of raw stagmeat(stewing steak, the cheapest cuts of stagmeat as cheaper cuts of meat are as good, nutritionally, as the expensive cuts like fillet-steak). Plus some raw pienapple chunks.
`
Day 17:- 1 kilo of raw wild boar plus a box of either raw cherries or raw blueberries.
Generally speaking, I aim for 1 large meal of raw meats a day, eaten within a 2 hour period or even less time. I often add some raw fruits(sometimes semi-organic, but I find nonorganic raw fruit not anywhere near as bad for me as low-quality grainfed meats). I also make a point of including some raw organ-meats every couple of weeks. In the past, I would eat a far higher percentage of raw organ-meats each fortnight as I had been told by other RVAFers that including raw organ-meats into the diet speeded up their health-recovery - and I had found them to be correct given my own subsequent experience and various scientific reports showing a much higher level of nutrients in raw organ-meats than raw muscle-meats.Now that I am long fully healed, I am much less bothered re raw organ-meats but still eat them regularly. Some RVAFers, instead, claim that one needs to eat only a minimum of 10 percent of one's raw-animal-food-intake in the form of raw organ-meats, but no more.
I focus mainly on raw wild game as I have been very lucky in finding sources thereof, and because they are so much cheaper than raw, grassfed/organic meats(and are higher in quality re nutrients). To a lesser extent, I also focus on raw wildcaught seafood as I have found that such a combination works far better for me than relying solely on raw meats from land mammals or solely on raw seafood for my raw-animal-food-intake. (I have also found that the higher the level of nutrients in a food, the less I have to eat of it, as a result.) I usually try to make sure that the raw meats are relatively fatty though I do still eat lean muscle-meats if no fatty leats are available, and don't worry too much re this.
I don't like relying on raw eggs too much, and mostly eat only a few raw goose eggs during 2 months in the spring or a few raw quail egg-boxes throughout the rest of the year. I only go in for raw eggs in bulk during those rare occasions when I cannot get hold of raw, grassfed meats or raw wildcaught seafood. Even then, I don't prolong the experience as I have found that I have a very slight food-intolerance towards eggs, even raw ones,which only manifests itself if I consume lots of raw eggs at a time.
I also only buy raw heather honeycomb in the summer, in small amounts(no more than 8 ounces a fortnight, usually less). I find I cannot stand raw, liquid honey in bottles and strongly suspect that most so-called "raw" honey has been heated(a beekeeper told me they all have to heat the honey to get it into the jars as manual handling would make the honey cost far more - plus current UK government laws allow honey to be labelled "raw" even if the honey has "only" been heated to 80 degrees Centigrade for a short time!).
Here is a sample thread showing what other RVAFers eat in a day:-
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/
Again, don't take it too seriously, as you don't share the exact same circumstance or metabolic rate etc. as the ones above.
4) I just put a tablespoonful of edible (sundried)French Green Clay into a pint-glass and then mix it with mineral-water and drink it.(I don't recommend any other kind of clay for various reasons). I only got a benefit(in the form of 1 detox) when I first used the clay, but not since - probably because, by then, I had been almost 3 years into doing RVAF diets, so had no toxins to get rid of to any extent.But, at the start of a RVAF diet, I'm sure it's very useful to get rid of toxins from SAD-eating days.
5) It's not generally a good idea to mix raw and cooked foods together. They both require different kinds of digestion so conflict with each other. For healing/recovery purposes, Aajonus recommends a diet consisting of 85+ percent raw foods. I agree re this as eating cooked foods in quantity not only slows down the healing-rate but it burdens the body with more heat-created toxins from the cooked foods.
Long-term raw-animal-foodists do occasionally eat cooked foods on certain social occasions. These can cause minor issues with digestion or cause the body to go into a very minor detox, but people like me use "high-meat" http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/display-your-culinary-creations/high-meat-recipe-pr...
or "EM"-products and/or high-quality enzyme supplements as the extra bacteria or enzymes helps avoid any such possible symptoms. Also, when choosing cooked foods on such social occasions, we make sure to experiment a lot to see which cooked foods cause few or no immediate symptoms(for example I found that I could handle cooked,lean muscle-meats better than cooked, fatty meats, and I found cooked rice in moderation to cause only negligible symptoms etc.)
Oh, here are 2 useful links you should read:-
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/important-info-for-newbies/sticky-advice-for-newbie...
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/important-info-for-newbies/where-to-buy-cheap-raw-a...(please-don't-post-in-this-thread!)/
So, to reduce costs, there is:- Intermittent Fasting, raw organ-meats which are cheaper and more nutritious per kilo than raw muscle-meats; raw wild game is usually cheaper and more nutritious per kilo than raw grassfed/organic meats. You should also avoid buying from producers listed by Aajonus, as I have heard from other sources that these producers are all far too expensive. Better to buy direct in bulk from grassfed meat farms or buy from local farmers' markets once you've made an order by phone).
I cannot give you exact details re US prices, but I have found that it costs me c. 60 UK pounds sterling on average a week for a high-quality RVAF diet consisting mostly of raw animal foods, and some raw plant foods.If I am not remotely bothered re the cost, I may sometimes pay as much as 90 UK pounds sterling a week for the most expensive raw foods available at my farmer's market(eg:- raw lobster, raw scallops or raw, grassfed/organic fillet-steak), and if I am on a budget, I have been able to get away with paying only 45 UK pounds sterling for high quality raw foods a week(usually then buying 3 whole wild hare carcasses at 12 pounds fifty pence each plus a little raw fruit or similiar). I have found in the past, that US prices for food or anything else amount to about the same in numbers as the figures in UK pounds, roughly(so 60 US dollars a week on average for an American RVAFer sounds about right) - but, of course, the US dollar is worth less than the UK pound sterling, so I suspect that that means that you Americans get raw foods at cheaper prices than we do.
Well, I hope I have answered all your questions. Feel free to ask another question if you need more info. Just please ask a separate question next time as follow-up questions are awkward to deal with as they contain the previous question-and-answer).
HTH,
RPG.
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