QuestionI have been reading a lot of your answers to other peoples questions and one post in particular caught my attention. In one of your answers you mentioned the 揳quatic ape theory?and I had never heard of that before so I checked it out on the google search engine. One of the articles that I read really made me think about how humans might have evolved.
I know that there isn抰 a lot of scientific fossil evidence to support that theory but it still made a lot of sense to me that we could have evolved this way. I抳e noticed both with myself and with some other rpd抯 that raw seafood (fish, shrimp, oysters, etc.) seems to be a lot more tolerable, if not preferred, in terms of taste than when compared to red meats and even some terrestrial white meats, and especially organ meats, at least when they first start out on the diet. Has this been your experience as well?
Anyway, right now my diet is mostly raw, citrus fruits(lemon, grapefruit, oranges), bananas, coconut meat, eggs minus the egg white, bone marrow, and mollusks like oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels. I want to incorporate more fish in my diet by actually catching my own since, as you probably already know, fish is very expensive to buy. I know I probably sound like a broken record but my main concern with freshwater fish is the parasite issue. I know you said parasites aren抰 really a problem when it comes to farmed animals but what about wild animals, especially fish? Most of the articles I read on eating raw fish say that saltwater fish are usually ok but freshwater fish are way more like to have parasites in them. What are your thoughts on this?
Another concern I have is about pollution. I don抰 necessarily think that fishing spots in my city (Saint Louis, Missouri), are polluted but do you think that the possible amount of pollution would be a problem? Do you normally go fishing? If so what kind of places do you normally fish at and what kind of fish do you normally catch/eat? Also how do you normally prepare raw whole fish, whether bought or caught?
Oh, and here is the article on the aquatic ape theory that I was talking about in case you wanted to check it out for yourself. Thanks!
http://www.primitivism.com/aquatic-ape.htm
AnswerWhile many of the Aquatic Ape Theory's points sound very plausible, it's been claimed by mainstream scientists that pro-AA advocates are really just creating a theory out of thin air and then cherry-picking primarily those facts which fit in with the theory while discarding others.
The current evidence from Palaeo-human bones indicates that the palaeo diet-intake of animal-food was pretty varied, including fish/fowl/ and land-mammals - the Neanderthals ate only land-mammals, apparently. While it's true that there's evidence of seafood-consumption way back, it's difficult to see how most of mankind was congregated around coastal or lake areas as there isn't that much opportunity for food and only limited space along the coastal stretches as regards finding food. It would have been far easier to hunt the migrating herds of mammals further away from the coasts.
Plus, fishing requires sophisticated tools, and, according to 1 archaeologist I talked to a while back, it's generally accepted, nowadays, that advanced tools, such as bows and arrows and traps(and presumably nets?) were only invented c.60,000 years ago, which is very late indeed in the Palaeolithic era - flints wouldn't have worked well re catching fish en masse.
One other problem is that AA-advocates point to the fact that East Africa was full of swamps and lakes in those days, unlike the savannah of today. This, however, assumes that the Out-of-Africa theory is correct, and I personally think that the MultiRegional Hypothesis is more logical and therefore more likely.
Here's a very critical analysis of the Aquatic Ape Theory:-
http://www.aquaticape.org/
On a personal note, I will admit that I found it easier to eat raw fish than most raw meats, early on in the diet - in fact eating the raw seafood made it much easier to get used to the raw meats/organ-meats, later on. But I wouldn't be surprised if this was more psychological than anything else - after all, I'd been eating plenty of (albeit preservative-ridden) sushi and sashimi(raw fish) for years before I went rawpalaeo.
Generally speaking, I find I do best when I include a significant amount of raw seafood in my diet(c.10-50% for me, depending on my whim). Excluding it entirely is a bad idea as I especially thrive on things like raw, wildcaught oysters, at the same time, I've tried a 100% raw seafood-plus-some-raw-carbs-diet, a long while back, and it was not a success, either.
Re fishing/parasites/pollution:- in my 7 years of being rawpalaeo, I've never had an issue with parasites with any raw animal food, whatsoever, fish or otherwise, so I'm just not worried re this issue. As far as pollution is concerned, well, I have no control over where I get my fish as I've never gone in for fishing as a hobby(well, I have, once or twice, but never caught anything). From what I understand, though, if one joins local angling associations etc., one can easily find out which stretches of river/lakes etc. are best as regards low or nonexistent pollution-levels.
HTH,
RPG.
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