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My crazy diet experiments (3+ years)
Regarding raw food:
Dont believe me, dont believe any raw food guru. Do the research yourself: Google it and find out at what temperatures these carcinogenic toxins are created: heterocyclic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, Advanced Glycation End Products. There are a even more toxins created by cooking but this is enough for a start. This isnt a conspiracy theory, this is mainstream science, thats why you can find it so quickly on google.
How come every species on earth lives on raw food is 10000 times more healthy and less degenerated than humans? Why wouldnt we able to do the same? How come even other primates eat raw meat? Why wouldnt we be able to digest it with our 1,1-1,5 ph (scavenger like) stomach acid?
Regarding fasting:
I slept for 8 full hours on 19 out of 20 days of my fast. 2-3 weeks after breaking the fast I so far dont need as much anymore on most days. If this was a cortisol issue, I assume I should have slept less while fasting as well? But I understand your concerns, I will for sure update when things go wrong, I dont do any of these things because of ideology, religion or whatever. I just wanna know what is optimal for health and healing. I doubt it is a cortisol issue because I get a lot of carbs in.
At first I also thought it might be cortisol, but then I tried eating 1-2 bananas before going to bed but I still didnt sleep any longer, while having energy the entire day.
Regarding eletrolytes:
If you drink the water the right way and rest completely while fasting, most people dont need them. Thats why I never had any "muscle spams, joint cracks and headaches" while fasting. If you dont do it properly, I agree: you need to take electrolytes or it will be very dangerous.
Again: I will definetely update if some things go wrong. I dont know everything and I could definetely be wrong on some things. I just like to experiment.
The pH scale works exponentially, so even though numerically we might be very close to the pH of a carnivorous animal, that still makes our stomach orders of magnitude less acidic.
We have evolved alongside cooking for the past 100 thousand years, give or take. Chronic disease is something that has been observed only in the past 10 thousand years, so it's more likely to be attributed to the practices we adopted with the agricultural revolution. As for carcinogens, I think it's safe to say that the dose makes the poison and that the tradeoff is well worth it in the case of cooked food, unless you eat charred meat on the daily.
I can see how a more sedentary approach could alleviate the need for electrolytes during fasting, and how that might translate into less sleep required too. It is interesting to hear that you could sleep for 8hrs a night throughout such a long fast. I can barely sleep for any longer than 4hrs after the 3rd day of fasting.
I'm glad that your fast helped you! If you go to bed when the sun goes down and get up 6 hours later, does that mean you are up at like 2:00 am? I think if I was up at that time of night I'd be wondering what to do with myself.
@BeefWizard
The pH of a (healthy) human stomach is even lower than some scavengers and most of the other carnivores. (source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Stomach-pH-data-included-in-empirical-analysis-Taxonomic-class-order-species-common_fig1_280586773).
Lets look at the facts:
- Cooked meat contains these harmful compounds: heterocyclic amines, AGEs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. On top of that you lose some b vitamins and vitamin c, and all enzymes.
- Raw meat doesnt contain any of these compounds and still has all vitamins + enzymes.
These are the scientific facts. I think raw meat wins the race, but I of course completely agree with you that cooking our food is one of the last things to blame for the extremely poor health and vitality of humans compared to literally every other species on this planet. But I still think it is a factor.
@lil chick No I go to bed at around 10 pm and get up at around 4 am. Give or take one hour. It will be interesting to see how that changes in winter.
I think raw meat requires more energy to digest than cooked meat, and that is the main tradeoff with retention of vitamins. I recall reading something about raw meat consumption being thermogenic and that the Inuit attribute the consumption of raw meat to making them feel warm.
Fermentation of meat is probably the best way to pre-digest it while retaining vitamin content.
I think browning the outside of a steak and leaving it mostly rare inside is a decent compromise. Not very many carcinogens if you brown it at moderately low heat, and most vitamins are still retained. Plus, there seems to be a consensus that browned meat tastes better...that's worth something!
I've been eating only raw meat since April 2018. Dropping the cooked meat eliminated my need for insulin and improved my overall health, although my pancreas is not totally healed and I hope a low vitamin A diet is the cure as it will address the root cause. I will keep eating the raw meat even though I have recently adopted what I believe to be a low vitamin A approach.
If you're eating wild meat cooked meat wins. Eating wild meat raw like wild fowl, rabbits etc would be difficult to digest or even chew as it's so tough and it'll quickly infect you with some really nasty parasites.
I eat raw beef every morning for breakfast (+ rice and some beans/lentils) and find the taste delicious and the meat extremely easy to digest.
I buy organic lean beef, mince it and make kids steaks (100 g) and deep freeze. After 6 days at minus 25 C there is no problem with parasites.
It's generally considered safe to eat beef raw (source dependent).
My understanding is that there is not enough evidence to claim that freezing or soaking in vinegar is a reliable way to make meat safe.
Wild meat can contain parasites like pork tapeworm and hydatids which can cause disability or death.
I would never eat any raw fish.
Some plant foods carry a high risk too, for example raw watercress carries a high risk of transmitting liver fluke which is really nasty. A lot of restaurants don't understand this.
Cue the ivermectin from that other recent thread, LOL. I can't help but wonder if the reason ivermectin helps people is because they have un-diagnosed parasites. But really, is it part of life on Earth? I once read a 200 year old journal of a woman who was a midwife and she was always giving anti-parasitical herbs to people. I suppose many culinary herbs are gentle anti-parasiticals, and if we've been cutting back (to avoid VA's) we might suffer a bit at the lack of them.
Human poop was left right on top of the ground a lot more back in the olden days, so I suppose a yearly worming was important back then.