Expert: RawPalaeoGuy - 12/6/2008

Question
Can you please tell me what precautions,if any, are to be taken before eating raw meat,poultry,fish and eggs in order to avoid having parasites, salmonella,etc.?  I have been advised to not even have rare cooked meat, especially hamburger, because of this and yet I am reading about Primal and Paleo dieters eating raw animal foods. Can you help me out on this or tell me where I can look?  

Thank you,

Ron Jacko

Answer
Look, most of the scares re food-poisoning/parasites are completely bogus. The only reliable way you can find that out is, like so many others, to try a RAF(raw animal food) diet for a few years. We all go through various phobias about bacteria/parasites when we first start on this sort of thing. I , for example, would, at first, douse my foods with reputed antibacterial/anti-parasitic herbs like garlic/cayenne-pepper/wormwood tincture etc. Eventually, I, like so many others, got tired of this routine and simply forgot to do it, and found, to my surprise that, after years of being raw, I'd never had any of the problems with raw food that are commonly cited in the media.  These days, like so many RAFers, I eat plenty of fermented meats, something that others would claim

All that said, everyone needs reassurance, so I would recommend, other than using the antibacterial/anti-parasitic herbs, you could marinate your raw meats/fish for 24 hours in a container of raw, freshly-squeezed (organic) lemon-juice. That, apparently, kills off the bacteria. Sally Fallon recommends those rawists following her diet to freeze meats/fish for a minimum of 14 days in order to counter any threat of parasites, but, like all the above methods, is quite unnecessary.


The fact is, however, that all the meat we eat in the Western world is heavily regulated and farmers, even organic farmers, are expected to give their animals deworming medicines to ward off the possibility of parasites. So, unless you're living in a tropical environment in an unregulated place where meats are highly likely to be contaminated, you have nothing to worry about. Mind you, I've eaten huge amounts of raw meats and organs from wild animals over the last 7 years of being rawpalaeo, and have never suffered a parasitic episode, so I'm dubious about the whole notion and subscribe, instead, to the Hygiene Hypothesis:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis


One key point to keep in mind is that it's not just a question of bacteria/parasites but a question of the environment these things are in(so eating cooked-food would make one more vulnerable to other issues). So, for example, eating meat from a cow that's been 100% grassfed is going to be a lot healthier for you than eating grainfed meats. Here's a study showing how bacterial issues are not a problem with grassfed meats:-

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VPN-4073K1N-6&_user=1...