Question Thank you much once again! I cannot but admit to be amused to learn that one can get rather quick and valuable advice on this site and ABSOLUTELY free of charge. It's extremely convenient and helpful! I honour you for that!
So, let me take this opportunity and ask you some follow-up questions.
You say that it's really best to avoid the veggie-juice... In turn, Aajonus says that "raw vegetable juices are our best vitamin, enzyme and mineral supplements." Won't the total exclusion of the green juices cause the deficiencies of the mentioned elements?
I do agree with the minimal carb consumption but want to specify waht the maximum amount of honey one should consume? Perhaps, about 5-7 tsp or so? And that honeycomb that are so frequent in you answers, you mean "a blended milkshake consisting of 2-4 raw eggs, 3-6 ounces raw milk, 1-4 ounces raw cream and 1-2 tablespoons unheated honey" or some other formula?
Though the recommendation of "high-meat" is smth new to me, I find it rather interesting and would like to try it, but... what "high-meat" should mean in the context... a non-refrigerated (for several days) meat?
And finally, about FOOD-COMBINING. What is you opinon on combining of different meats, i.e. beef and lamb or glands with meats (liver or kidneys with beef)? What Aajonus says in this point?
Thank you much,
healthily,
Yuriy
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The text above is a follow-up to ...
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In you answers on allexperts.com I've found the following reply: "Basically, Aajonus' 2nd book contains 90% of the information an RPD-beginner needs, so it's important that you read this book(several times) before trying out the diet, as otherwise you're bound to make the same sort of mistakes I made initially..." I've already started the Primal Diet but now can't buy the book (don't have e-card)...and don't want to make mistakes you mentioned...would you be so kind to outline at least a few of them... Thank you MUCH!
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I'm afraid that I was being overly generous with my previous www.allexperts.com answer, at the time. The correct statement would have been that Aajonus' 2nd book provides only c.50% of all the information a rawpalaeodieter needs.
Since you don't have a credit-card(I'm assuming you don't mean "e-card" as in the standard meaning:- "electronic greetings-card"), you may not be able to buy some of the books I'd recommend such as Weston-Price's book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" or any cooked-Palaeolithic diet books by Vilhjalmur Stefansson or Loren Cordain(but I think you can still send money orders to ww.amazon.com and other american bookshop sites as long as you have a US bank-account - if you have a US bank account, it's best to read as much as possible as otherwise you'll be going in blind, without much guidance, which isn't much use) . All the books I've mentioned have useful additional info in them, but, like with Aajonus' works, also have questionable advice such as regards advocating raw dairy or cooked-foods etc.
Now, back to the common mistakes I made, when starting out. The first was my consumption of raw dairy. Many rawpalaeodieters find, belatedly, that they are heavily allergic or have a food-intolerance to raw dairy products. Dairy also has an extremely high calcium:magnesium ratio, which is known to cause magnesium deficiency thus leading to further health problems - and this has often affected those who weren't allergic to the dairy.
Other than dairy, the most common mistake on this kind of diet is to go in for the veggie-juice. Juicing veg makes the nutrients in raw veg more bioavailable to humans, but, at the same time, makes the antinutrients common in plants more bioavailable. Many RPDers who went in for the kind of large daily veggie-juice consumption that Aajonus recommends, have reported symptoms of fatigue in the long-term, until they cut it out from the diet.Best to avoid it, really.
Other than that, other issues are the excessive amounts of food that Aajonus recommends for each day. I found it far easier on my digestive system to eat only one large meal a day, and fast for a whole day from time to time, to give my whole system a rest.
I also had some negative experiences with AV's raw olive-oil suggestions(almost instant diarrhea!) so I've steered well clear of raw vegetable oils.
Other than that, I found Aajonus' apparent recommendation to mainly eat raw, lean muscle-meats a non-starter. My health improved much, much faster once I started to incorporate a lot of raw organ-meats in my diet such as raw kidney, tongue, brain, heart, liver(this last item in moderation), suet, and especially raw bone-marrow. In short, organ-meats are far more nutrient-dense than raw muscle-meats, and also easier on the digestion. Other RPDers have also noted a much quicker health-recovery with raw organ-meats.
Also, despite Aajonus' dubious assertions that grain-fed meat is fine, I found that I thrived better on organic, 100% grassfed meat. And this experience is also borne out by others re this.
Other than this, (long-term) RPDers have noticed a common, gradual tendency towards a carb-intolerance once they've been some time on the Primal Diet - they seem to do better with only minimal carb consumption - (this was my own experience, as well). This is not a relevant problem for beginners to this diet, at this stage, IMO.
One other mistake I made was that I didn't try Aajonus' recommendation of "high-meat" a whole lot sooner. Right at the start of the diet, I'd had serious digestive problems, which the bacteria-rich high-meat could have solved a lot quicker than otherwise. However, I should mention that eating "high-meat" is NOT recommended until after you've got completely used to the taste of raw fresh animal foods.
Hope this rough guideline is useful,
RPG
Answer(Could you please only send a follow-up-type question, if the previous question and answer was only a few lines long(<10)? With lengthy questions and answers, it's best to ask a whole new, separate question.Thanks. It just makes it easier to answer the question at the other end).
Re veggie-juice:- Veggie-juice contains many antinutrients, which include mineral-blockers and enzyme inhibitors, so that drinking a lot of veggie-juice will, over time, actually cause mineral deficiencies. It's therefore a bad way to stock up on vitamins. Eat a little raw, organic fruit, instead. Heck, even raw , solid veg is better than veggie-juice as veggie-juice-drinkers will inevitably be drinking down more antinutrients in liquid form than they could possibly absorb if they ate only raw, solid veg(solid, raw veg is notoriously tasteless according to RPDers).
The other consideration is that animal-food, unlike veg, is what is called a "complete food", which means it has all the nutrients that the human body needs(this only applies, of course, if you eat animal food in raw form, and if it's of high-quality(ie grassfed/organic etc.) and if you include plenty of raw offal/raw organ-meats in your diet).
Re honey-amounts:- Generally speaking, at the start of the diet, most people can tolerate some carbs at least, but I'd still suggest only two or three tablespoonfuls a day, at this stage, and only if you are ABSOLUTELY sure that it is 100% raw - it turns out that most so-called "raw" honey is, in fact, not raw at all, as most countries allow honey to be labelled "raw" as long as it's not heated above 80 degrees Centigrade, which is a very high level of temperature. If it's not raw, it'll really foul up your blood-sugar levels - and, I ought to add, that many RPDers experience problems with the excessive amounts of even 100% genuine raw honey that Aajonus recommends. If you're only eating raw honey occasionally, rather than every single day, then, of course you can have higher amounts than what I suggested, but it's really not a good diea to have more than six to eight ounces at any one time.
In my own case I was never able to handle raw, liquid honey at all and chose raw heather honeycomb instead, as that is virtually always sold raw(in the UK , anyway) if sold in a plastic container. Honeycomb is definitely not one of the horrible Aajonus-inspired, dairy-filled food-combinations that you suggested it was - it's in fact the wax that the honey is held in within the hive. The wax in the honeycomb helps to offset the sickly sweetness of raw honey, which is useful. Here is an image of what a tub of honeycomb looks like:-
http://tinyurl.com/ysv5kj - you can see the wax on the surface.
Re Food-combining:- Given Aajonus' endless mixed recipes containing dozens of different ingredients from nuts to dairy to eggs etc., I'm pretty certain that he isn't much interested in the standard rules behind food-combining and would be against it! I, personally, usually follow an Instincto-derived idea("mono-eating", where I prefer to eat one food at a time. Sometimes I'll eat a different food immediately after, more often than not I'll eat a different food perhaps half an hour later or so later, all within a four-hour maximum period. I used to be more strict about not mixing different types of foods together, at the start of my diet, because, like with so many refugees from junk-food diets, my digestive system was overburdened back in those days, and I needed to give my body a rest. These days, though it doesn't matter any more, but I stick to this pattern(and occasional Intermittent Fasting) to give my digestive system a rest now and then.
Re "high-meat":- "High-meat" is the meat that Eskimos used to put into snow-drifts to freeze for several weeks befotre taking it out. One can't leave it out at room-temperature, just like that, as the flies put larvae in it, which quickly turn into maggots. So, what happens is that one takes a vacuum-sealed jar(such as a "Bell Jar" etc.) and puts some meat in it, and then puts it in the fridge, with the fridge at a not-too-cold setting. Then you air it outside once every 3 or 4 days(according to AV-doctrine) in order to replace the air in the jar with fresh oxygen so that the bacteria in the meat can breathe, and then you start eating little bits of it, after a months has passed. I speed things up by airing the jar once a day, and can usually get the same benefits after 16-20 days or so. See my past posts re high-meat for further info.(It's really best to try and get used to eating fresh, raw meat first, though).
RPG
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