Raw Paleo Diet?

[Tiffany]

Has anyone else heard of this?

Its apparently a diet consisting of the ingestion of mainly raw meats, organs and other raw animal products! Proponents claim this is the diet that our ancestors lived off of (extremely debatable in itself, and even so what was the life expectancy of our ancestors? Ha.).

Out of curiousity I went on their forums and apparently we vegans are the unhealthy crazy nuts. Dunno about that, as raw meat has almost always been declared dangerous and full of bacteria and saturated fat and raw veggies almost always been declared healthy and full of vitamins, antioxidants and fibre.

I honestly didn't know such a thing even existed until an hour ago! Personally I find this diet horrendous in every ethical and medical way but what is your perspective on it?

[Korn]

Personally I find this diet horrendous in every ethical and medical way but what is your perspective on it?

It's that "the ingestion of mainly raw meats, organs and other raw animal products" is horrendous and also something we don't need.

Proponents claim this is the diet that our ancestors lived off of (extremely debatable in itself, and even so what was the life expectancy of our ancestors? Ha.).

IN case you haven't checked out this subforum yet... pretty much every thread in this section is about whether humans always ate meat/are omnivores/whether there are any good reasons to copy the lifestyle of someone who lived thousands of years ago - and so on.

Re. the rawness vs. cookedness of what human ancestors ate, here are some links to what others think about the phenomenon (and how long it has been going on):

Light My Fire: Cooking As Key To Modern Human Evolution


From meat eating to cooking - the key to our minds?


http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/H...ion.shtml#fire

Of Tubers, Fire and Human Evolution

Not that it really matter what this people and pre-people did, but our ancestors discovered fire before they were defined as 'humans'.

At some point we were all bacteria. At a later stage, sealife begun. To find a certain period and claim that some species, living in this time period should be used as a reference for what we do today just doesn't make sense to me.

I'm increasing my intake of raw ingredients in my meals, but that's not because some prehistoric beings didn't know fire and ate only raw food!

[Tiffany]

Thanks a lot for the links Korn! I will look into that.

I agree completely with what you say about it making little sense to do what our "ancestors" did, whatever that may be. I think human evolution has gotten to the point where we should evolve our empathy, love and understanding of other species, not rely on them for food because "that's what we've always done".

[Bearshark]

This is one of the grossest things I've ever heard!! I mean, if they want to eat like our ancestors and ignore the obvious dangers of eating raw meat, surely they would have to eat fruit and nuts and veges as well?? I haven't studied this or anything so I may be wrong, but I always imagine that when our ancestors ate meat, it'd be when they could catch it, so surely during times when they couldn't, they'd be eating stuff like fruits and vegetables around them?
I may be wrong but to me, the vegan diet would be far far closer to how our ancestors used to eat than the paleo diet?!
This paleo diet idea really really does not make sense to me
(Apologies if this is in in the links placed by Korn, I'm on obscenely slow dial-up and so I try to avoid loading pages)

[Tiffany]

I also highly doubt that these people actually have the ability to go out and hunt their own meat. Oh no, instead they buy it all ready to go in a little package, right from the grocery store - just like our ancestors did, eh guys? *rolls eyes*

[MoonDance]

^ Exactly. All nice and prepackaged for their 'convenience.' *rolls eyes along with Tiffany*

[PaleoVeganologist]

This movement offends me, as both a vegan and a paleontologist in training.

Sure, early hominids ate meat. So what? They also ate each other when they could. Is that an argument for cannibalism in the here and now?

What bugs me about the paleo-diet movement more than its meat-eating, though, is its romanticizing of a past that never was, an annoying trend present in all sorts of anti-modern movements. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle of Paleolithic Homo sapiens was unsustainable even for them (agriculture was invented for a reason, paleo-geniuses!), and certainly is for us.

[horselesspaul]

Yes, let's be all "Paleo" and hopefully have a 33 year lifespan too.
Idiots.

[loveganism]

There's a raw (vegan) foodist/minor celebrity called DurianRider. On his YouTube channel, you can find videos of him interviewing people on the diet who are clearly emaciated, and who eat rotten meat.

Pretty revolting. As with all the 'raw' diets, it seems many of the people doing it become obsessed with the focus on 'raw' rather than their actual health.