Raw Meat Eaters And Richard Wrangham

I recently came across a few things that challenged some of my ideas about diet and nutrition.  The first was a recent article in Vice magazine about a man named Derek Nance who has claimed to lived on a diet of nothing but raw meat for the last 5 years, here is a link to the article:

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-five-years

It was a fruitarian friend of mine who had shared this article on facebook and I had a look through it.  I had already came across this idea as there is a previous example of someone following a raw meat diet for an extended period of time, that being the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson:

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

I believe the story goes that Stefansson had spent time living with inuits who sustained themselves on this type of diet and convinced a friend to do the same for a year as part of a medical study.  The wikipedia article says they were both in perfect health though I believe I have read from other sources that one of the men had developed diabetes by the end of the study.

I was interested by how my fruitarian friends reacted to it.  Many were disgusted, or did not accept that Derek could live on such a diet without developing problems and many ridiculed the man in various ways.  In reality the guy looks in pretty good health and has been able to recover from illness as a result of this lifestyle. He also takes the responsibility to kill the animals he eats which I can respect him for in a way.

I think the strong reactions were a result of a similar thing that happens when you tell someone that you are vegan or fruitarian; people can get very defensive and uncomfortable and aim a barrage of questions at you about protein, fats and other things while their mind is busily coming up with reasons as to why they could not or would not follow that diet themselves.

The article is a challenge to high carb vegans and fruity people who have learned so much about the dangers of the paleo low carb diet and have convinced themselves that this diet is not possible to follow for long periods of time and will lead to an inevitable collapse in health.  For me it is another testament to the strength of the human body to adapt to various diets and continue to function.  It makes me wonder if this ability to adapt to a wide range of diets is one of the many things that have let us come this far as a species.

This leads neatly on to a video I watched recently of a short interview on Dr John McDougall's Youtube channel with Evolutionary Biologist Richard Wrangham about the role that cooked food has played in the human diet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVeGHIEtBAA

This information is particularly challenging to raw foodists as Wrangham is saying that we are not evolved to cope with a raw food diet.  The timing of this video is apt coming as it does only weeks after Dr Douglas Graham, one of the worlds leading advocates of the raw food diet, responded to Dr McDougall's criticisms of the fruitarian diet.  McDougall famously believes that we are "Starchivores" and are evolved to live on a diet of cooked starches.

I could make an attempt to respond to Wrangham's points but I'm sure others will do that much better and at greater length.  The reason I have brought it up is that it is another challenge to a fruitarian's beliefs. Sometimes we get too used to our reasons and motivations for following our whatever out particular path is, especially if that path seems to be one in which you are depriving yourself of some of the pleasures that you once enjoyed.  So when these beliefs are challenged it can make us reconsider why we are doing what we do.

The truth is I would love Wrangham and McDougall to be right.  I would love it if cooked starches had the same effect on my body and mind as fruit does and I would probably never have went fully raw if it wasn't the case that there was a marked difference between eating starches and eating fruit.  Fruit was always clearly the food that was most easily dealt with by the body and gave the best effect on my emotional and mental state and I could immediately see that change for the negative with the re introduction of cooked food.  Eventually I realised I had to go with my body on this one and gave up the starches, a lot harder that it sounds.

One of my main motivations for staying on this path is the consideration of what we as a species want for our future.  Even if we have some adaptations to eating cooked starches or raw meat, the important question is not to consider the extremes that our brutal past have equipped us to deal with but to consider what food we want to choose to shape our collective future.  I believe we have suffered as a result of moving away from the natural diet indicated by our frugivorous design, not just in terms of our health but in terms of losing our connection to the planet and our place in its natural order.  I believe all of these things has had a huge impact on us psychologically, making us feel insecure and unsafe on the planet that for years we were sustained on without the need for cooking, weapons, tools, money, clothing, housing and all of the other aspects of modern life that we deem necessary to thrive happily.

Cooked food and raw meat are parts of our past that should remain there, we should head towards our fruitarian future.  The process is simple: eat more fruit and plant more fruit trees!

Ronster