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I've been eating mostly raw food for about a year, and I love it. My diet so far has consisted of blue-rare steak (all you need to do to be safe is to sear the

I've been eating mostly raw food for about a year, and I love it. My diet so far has consisted of blue-rare steak (all you need to do to be safe is to sear the edges and sides to kill E. coli that has gotten onto the meat during butchering. I learned this in my microbiology class!) [You have to watch out about things like steak sauce - read the labels, and you'll find out that almost all of them have sugar in them. So I never use steak sauce, ketchup, or any of that shit - just salt+pepper.] Salads are great, as long as you make your own dressing (so that you can keep it low-sugar.) Just a little salt, vinegar, and a nice lettuce mix, and just a little feta cheese... Berries can be great if you need something sweet; they have enough fiber to keep you from getting an insulin spike if you're on my diet. [Be careful to not do this too much - they're expensive, and you can overdo it by gorging on several boxes every day! Many of your needs for vitamins are met with meat and leafy greens.] At any rate, what I've described is probably called a paleo diet (maybe?) Meat is such an essential part of my life! I'm pretty healthy, and I've lost a lot of fat eating this way. (I used to be 215 lbs, now I'm at 171; I'm 6'1".) One more thing - I used to drink sugary soda and fruit juices - these are both terrible things to put into your body. Cut that out alone, and you'll be doing yourself a huge favor.

illumin8 17y ago
Interesting. Paleo diet has the right foods in it, but I suspect you're not gaining anything by not cooking your meats (except possible food poisoning). As others have said, cooking just denatures proteins, which is similar to what your stomach does anyway.
- maxharris 17y ago
  How am I at risk of food poisoning if I eat blue-rare steak (which is beef)? I agree that cooking hamburger all the way through is necessary (because the outside gets in when it's ground up), and that doing this doesn't work for chicken and pork (you need to cook those meats). But I still don't understand why you think my microbiology professor is wrong. She says that all you need to do is to kill the E. coli on the surfaces of the steak (which can get there from fecal contamination during butchering), and doing more than that is a waste. The outsides of the steaks I make are crispy, but about .5 cm below the surface, it's nice and red. (I don't eat cuts with huge veins and the like inside them.)
  - illumin8 17y ago
    You're fine then. I assumed you might eat other raw meats. I still enjoy a nice medium rare steak from time to time, although I don't like mine quite as rare as yours.
  - wooster 17y ago
    Cattle rancher here. You can get tapeworms by eating uncooked beef. Thankfully it's usually easily, albeit unpleasantly, cured. However, you need to know you have them first, which can take some time.

illumin8 17y ago

Interesting. Paleo diet has the right foods in it, but I suspect you're not gaining anything by not cooking your meats (except possible food poisoning). As others have said, cooking just denatures proteins, which is similar to what your stomach does anyway.

maxharris 17y ago
How am I at risk of food poisoning if I eat blue-rare steak (which is beef)? I agree that cooking hamburger all the way through is necessary (because the outside gets in when it's ground up), and that doing this doesn't work for chicken and pork (you need to cook those meats). But I still don't understand why you think my microbiology professor is wrong. She says that all you need to do is to kill the E. coli on the surfaces of the steak (which can get there from fecal contamination during butchering), and doing more than that is a waste. The outsides of the steaks I make are crispy, but about .5 cm below the surface, it's nice and red. (I don't eat cuts with huge veins and the like inside them.)
- illumin8 17y ago
  You're fine then. I assumed you might eat other raw meats. I still enjoy a nice medium rare steak from time to time, although I don't like mine quite as rare as yours.
- wooster 17y ago
  Cattle rancher here. You can get tapeworms by eating uncooked beef. Thankfully it's usually easily, albeit unpleasantly, cured. However, you need to know you have them first, which can take some time.