The Fallacy of the Benefits of Eating Raw Animal Foods
by Don Bennett, DAS

The info contained on the Raw Animal Food (RAF) sites is spurious; it is without basis in science. It simply lacks validity. In my opinion it is perpetuated by those who prefer to eat meat, cheese, milk, etc. It flies in the face of biology, anatomy, and physiology. It is a shining example of human nature; we can make incorrect choices thanks to free will. The firmly held beliefs of those who eat raw animal foods do not reflect reality.

As to the spuriousness of RAF eating, this from odomnet.com/live-food/faq.htm...

"Fruit: As this [the RAF] diet is primarily an animal based diet that is high in protein and fats, carbohydrates tend to adversely effect blood sugar since they don't have much fat to slow them down. Fruit is a wonderful food, but you don't need to eat much of it. As a general rule, it is a good idea when eating fruit to have a raw fat with it to slow down the rate of the sugar hitting your blood stream. Raw fats with fruit seems to have a very different effect than raw fruits alone, in maintaining health. You can have raw, no-salt-added cheeses, or cream, or eggs in a egg and fruit smoothie, for some examples."

In the real world, eating fats with fruits does hold up sugar from leaving the bloodstream and entering cells, but this is an adverse reaction, and not one to be desired. This leads to chronic, sustained high levels of blood sugar, which in turn can promote candidiasis blooms, higher than normal weight, and can lead to a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. I'm very sensitive when it comes to blood sugar level changes, and if I eat sweet fruit alone, I have no problems (contrary to what the RAF eaters say), and have plenty of energy with no abnormally high (or low) blood sugar levels. If I were to eat fruit with fat however, I'd get lethargic, a good indication of a blood sugar level problem. And even if you eat sweet fruit alone, if you eat too much fat at any time of the day, it will interfere with that sugar being taken up by the cells, resulting in high blood sugar (and hungry cells). There has been so much credible research showing that when the fat content of your diet rises above 10% (as a percentage of total calories) your health will suffer for it at some point. It surely won't happen just after you start eating a RAF diet, but let's check back with these folks decades down the road. None of us will have access to a time machine, so if we discover 30 years from now that the path we chose didn't work for us like we thought it would, we can't go back and try something different. This is why we need to use logic, sound reasoning, and common sense, without any personal biases or preferences, when considering what diet to embrace, because the "do whatever works for you" philosophy can't show you what did or didn't work, for decades.

Another example of their lack of credible information:

"Veggies: Contrary to popular diet advice these days, vegetables are not considered important on this diet because this diet is naturally cleansing and the digestive tract of a human is not set up for the cellulose in vegetables."

The nutrients contained in green leafy veggies (minerals for the most part) are essential to human health, and I'd rather get them first hand from the plants themselves, rather than second hand from animals who have eaten plants. And it is the cellulose in vegetables that accomplishes the beneficial cleansing. To say that meat is cleansing to the human body is like saying that pouring garbage all over your living room is cleansing to the living room. Sure, the living room will eventually be spotless, but that's because the garbage necessitated a thorough cleansing. Wouldn't it have been better to simply do regular primary cleansing (with plant fiber), rather than pollute the living room (with dead flesh) to invoke a secondary cleansing reaction? And animal flesh has no fiber, and fiber is something that is needed by our gut, a fact long settled and not subject to debate. But green leafy vegetables are not a good source of fuel, and that's where the natural sugars of fruit come in. And fruit also has the distinction of being a great source of vitamins (if you don't cook them).

The RAF folks are correct that it's the cooking of edible substances that does great harm. But there's no way that a person will be healthier eating a raw animal based diet over a raw plant based diet. You can't argue with nature. Well, you can, but it's fruitless. (No pun intended) Fact: We're designed to covet sweet things... that's the purpose of the taste buds that are coded for sweetness that are appropriately located at the front of our tongue. Animal flesh isn't sweet... unless you blend in some Medjool dates in a Vita-Mix.

It's a shame these folks participate in "I believe what I want to believe" rather than in "I believe in reality/nature/truth".

The health benefits experienced by folks going from the Standard American Diet diet to a RAF diet are due in part to the lack of cooking, and also to any other healthy changes they make. Those I know who then adopted a raw plant-based diet found further improvement. That says it all in my book.

For further info, read

So Much for the Hunter/gatherer Theory
High Protein Diets are Great for Losing Weight?
Dangers of the Atkins Diet
Atkins "Nightmare" Diet
Research Yields Surprises about Early Human Diets
How to Have the BEST Odds of Avoiding Degenerative Disease

And here's a great video debunking the "Paleo Diet"