Eating Raw Meat Every Day on Carnivore: Safe or Stupid?

Okay, everyone. I just want to do a quick video on whether or not you should do raw versus cooked meat on a carnivore diet. So, some people saying that the only true carnivore diet is a raw carnivore diet because carnivores in the wild don't cook meat. The problem with that is that carnivores have actually been cooking meat for nearly 2 million years and they're called humans. And so, you look at homohabilis, homohorus, homohide bales, homonythalis, and homo sapiens and everything in between. You actually see that we and our ancestors and those earlier forms of humans actually were cooking meat, we have pretty good evidence of this going back at least 1.6 million years and likely before that as well. So seeing as that we've been cooking meat for at least 1.6 million years, that is a long time for evolution to adapt to those changes that we would see in cooked versus raw meat. We even have evidence going back 800,000 years of people using rudimentary ovens because they've seen perfectly even heat distributions across bones that have been cooked and eaten by early humans in that time. And they see even heat distribution over the entire bone. Meaning that they really would have been able to do that only with an oven or some sort of rock formation that would have acted like an oven as opposed to direct heat over the fire because you'd have different hot spots that would heat one area more than the other. It's also important to realize that if the bone is evenly heated and cooked throughout, that means the meat around it was cooked all the way through and the heat penetrated into the bone. So that means this thing was baked for a long time. That means that meat was well done, not just roasted on the outside and rare on the inside because the bone would still be raw at that point as well. We also have evidence of cooking the marrow bones in order to crack them and break them, make them more brittle so we can access the marrow as well. This is going back hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer, that we've been using heat and fire in this way to extract more nutrients out of the meat and the bones and the bone marrow. This likely acted as a survival mechanism or an advantage to those people that did cook because it likely killed off the parasites that were in meat and protected people from parasitic infections which can cause serious disease and harm. There are some people saying that getting parasites is somehow beneficial. I would beg to differ with that and just look at the millions of people who die every year of malaria among all the other sorts of things. And I've been in third world countries. I've worked in endemic areas. I've worked in Bangladesh and refugee camps. Parasites are a real thing and they cause very serious diseases. You only have to see one case of neurocytoicosis where you have ova in the brain causing mass effect and seizures to realize that paras you do not want parasites in your body and especially your brain. So by cooking meat you can actually unlock some of the nutrients. you can actually make it more bioavailable, especially when you break down the collagen and make some of the proteins more bioavailable. It also has a counter effect which is to make things denatured and so you lose things like glutamine or torine and other heat sensitive nutrients. Fortunately, because we've had millions of years of adaptation, these are not essential nutrients that you have to have. These are things that we tend to make. That being said, some people don't necessarily make enough of them. And if you're not on a carnivore diet or you're eating high fiber, maybe you have lower amounts of torine because torine can get sucked out of your body because you make it in your liver that's expressed in your bile. And if you're eating a lot of fiber, that binds to bile and strips it out of your of your body in your stool and that actually takes the torine with it. So in those sorts of circumstances, you might need more torine. But if you're not eating fiber, etc., you probably don't need excess amounts of torine. You also don't lose all the torine. You just lose some of it. But either way, most people will not be in a position on a carnivore diet that they'll need more and more torine. And if you do, cooking things less, but still searing outside to protect from contamination could well provide all the torine that you need. And some people think that it's easier to digest and absorb raw meat. And maybe this is true, maybe it's not. There's no actual clear clinical evidence one way or the other. We just don't have any studies showing that. But we do have studies showing that even infants eating solid food for the first time in their life can absorb upwards of 98% of the cooked meat that they're fed. These are studies going back to the 1950s. And so if you're already absorbing 98% of the meat that you're eating when you cook it, you're getting another percent 2% maximum. And the fact is that you won't be able to break down the tough connective tissue and so that will come out. And so I don't think the increase in absorption is going to be more than negligible. Another argument is that when you cook meat or burn meat in particular, burn anything for that matter, that it can produce different sorts of toxic compounds such as heterosyclic amines that have been shown in some animal studies to increase your relative risk association for cancer. However, there are major flaws with that argument because those studies that that are being referred to again are in animal studies with mice that have not been cooking meat for 1.6 6 million years while we have. So it's not translatable to the human species because it's just completely different evolutionary pathway in biology. Also in those studies they actually use sometimes tens of thousands of times the amount of burnt compounds than you would ever see in even a very burnt piece of meat. And they gave them to these mice and they said, "Oh, look, there's a tiny little increase cancer rates." So it's not translatable to humans and it's at tens of thousands of times the dose. So really this is not good science. This is this is what we call junk science and you really cannot say one way or the other. This is going to increase your relative risk association for cancer and all the other reasons that this would reduce your risk of cancer such as mitochondrial functional improvement may well counteract that. But either way you can't actually take those studies and say this will definitely cause harm. Also don't burn the meat. It's pretty simple. You can boil it or just lightly cook it and and not generate those compounds in the first place. Steaming works as well and even ovens will often keep you from burning the outside as long as you're careful with the heat. Another argument is that when you're cooking meat, this creates advanced glycation end products, the AES that we talk about. When your blood sugar levels go up too high, you get an excess amount of glycation. So this is causing advanced glycation end products. So the glucose and other carbohydrates physically fuse other molecules and permanently damage them. And this is called the Mayard reaction. So the browning in meat, that's actually also the Mayard reaction. So, it's the same process that's happening when you're cooking meat as when your blood sugar is getting above a normal level and your body is actually cooking from the inside and you're actually browning from the inside. And I've talked about this before, but in neurosurgery, we see this in babies, you see the skull is just bleach white. And then when as people old get older, sort of an ivory sort of cream colored, and then maybe older people, people that smoked or drank and didn't take care of their health might actually be have a brown tint to it and the bone is much softer and more meian. And so, you can actually drill through it a lot easier. That means that the integrity of the bone has been damaged from that myard reaction from that glycation. Now the confusion here comes from what those advanced glycation and products actually mean. Because the thing is is if it's on the meat when you eat them, you actually just digest them and break them down into to their constituent amino acids and components and you don't actually internalize those advanced glycation end products. Also, it's not a problem that you just have advanced glycation end products floating around your body because they're not necessarily going around causing harm. It's just they're not functional. And so, if you glycate your molecules like HBA1C, that's a glycation end product of glucose and hemoglobin. That's just non-functional hemoglobin. There's a certain percentage of your hemoglobin that just doesn't work and it doesn't do its job. And that's the problem with advanced glycation end products in your body because it makes your body nonfunctional. If you just eat AES, that's not a problem. That doesn't then turn your body non-functional. It's basically the problem is you're cooking your body from the inside out by having excessive amounts of carbohydrates, not that you've just internalized advanced glycation end products. So, there's a very, very big difference in where you've got the advanced glycation end products. And really, it comes down to turning your own body into advanced glycation end products. That's the problem, not just that advanced glycation end products exist. So, what is the takehome here on whether or not you should eat raw or cooked meat? And the answer is doesn't really matter. Do what you feel is best for you. If you like cooking meat and that tastes good to you, great. If you think that raw makes you feel better, fine. Just make sure it's not contaminated because contamination does exist, germs do exist, parasites do exist. Now, there's a terrain theory and a germ theory where germ theory is just everything is about microbes. And terrain theory is well, actually it matters, you know, what the terrain is on, right? Because if you don't have fertile soil, then you can dump all the seeds you want on it. They're not going to grow. So the thing is is that if you have a healthy terrain, if your body is healthy and you're doing a lot of things that can be healthy, you will fight off a lot of infections and parasites very well. But that does not mean that germs don't exist. That does not mean that parasites don't exist. That does not mean that infections don't exist. We have an immune system for a reason. We have an immune system that attacks bacteria, viruses, parasites, and so on. It's there for a reason. We can track this. We see this under microscopes. We can show this and reproduce this in studies and take it from one individual, put it in another individual and replicate that disease and then getting rid of that pathogen or that parasite gets rid of the disease. This is something that actually has been shown. I've seen a lot of people get very serious infections in the hospital, both bacterial and parasitic, and this causes huge burden of disease and huge damage. And you don't you only have to see one person die of these sorts of things before you realize that yes, they do exist and it's not a fun thing to have or to die from. I've even had people that I've spoken to and and helped online that have decided they wanted to go down the raw path and I just said, "Look, just be careful and just make sure it's not contaminated." And they were doing fine for a long time, but then they were a bit lax with it. They left some meat unrefrigerated, thought it would be fine. They actually got extremely sick. They actually did get a bacterial infection. had to go to the hospital and they were in the hospital for several days and they're still recovering from the issues that it caused in their gut. So, this is something that you actually do have to pay attention to and don't just blindly eat raw meat and think that bacterial infections are something that happened to other people because they can definitely happen to you. So, as long as you are careful about that and you're eating meat from a source that you trust like a USDA standard, etc. there has been having good food handling processes and you're being safe with it and you want to do that and you feel fine with that, that's your business. But just remember that you could get a contaminated batch and searing the outside is very good for that. I personally sear the outside of most of my meat and then have that rare inside. Usually with beef, I I tend to cook chicken well done, but some people don't. I mean, there's there's chicken sashimi now where they'll grill the outside of the chicken just like siri and they'll cut away the cooked bits and then slice the inner and use that as sashimi. So, that's something that is being done in certain restaurants. I wouldn't do that unless you knew what you were doing. But, there are people that eat raw meat all the time and they do very very well with it. But, I just keep that in mind that contamination can happen and so it's very important just to be careful about that sort of thing. So, I prefer things to be less cooked on the inside. I prefer that taste. Sometimes I do have things that are raw. I have sashimi. I have steak arpacio. I have steak tartar. Sometimes I just get a bit anxious and I don't want to wait to cook a steak. So I'll just eat some of the steak as it is raw that's been sort of drying in the refrigerator. But I trust where that comes from and I'm careful with it. That works well for me. I know people that only want to eat meat that's very well done or medium well and they do well with that as well. So, at the end of the day, just eat the meat that you prefer, that tastes the best of you and makes you feel the best. If you feel that there's something missing and you want to start eating less cooked meat and just sear the outside and that makes you feel better, great. For me, I don't really feel too much of a difference. I've had both. Gone back and forth from well done meat, eating brisketss [clears throat] and things like that to just eating seared meat or even raw meat and I feel great either way. So, I'm not too worried about it for myself. If you want to try something and play around with it, as long as you're careful, then that's your business. But hopefully that gives you a bit of information so you're not scared off one way or the other that you have to do cooked or you have to do raw. I think you can do whatever the hell you want and as long as you're careful about it and you're safe, then you're an adult and you can make your an adult decision. All right. Thanks, guys.

Micromorphology and geochemistry show controlled burning 30m inside Wonderwerk Cave, giving strong evidence that early Homo was using fire at least 1 million years ago. Berna F, Goldberg P, Horwitz LK, Brink JS, Holt S, Bamford M, Chazan M. 2012. Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. PNAS 109(20):E1215–E1220. PMID: 22474385. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22474385/ Enamel crystal structure of carp teeth indicates low‑temperature, repeated heating, consistent with deliberate “oven‑like” cooking of fish by hominins ~780,000 years ago Zohar I, Biton R, Goren‑Inbar N, et al. 2022. Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6:1797–1806. PMID: 36357607. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01910-z Join my NEW 90 day Carnivore challenge group! Link below: https://dr-chaffee-s-90-day-carnivore-challenge.mn.co/landing/ 🌐 Discover More Resources, Guides, and Updates at My Website www.DrAnthonyChaffee.com - Your Hub For All Things Health and Nutrition Join My New YT Membership Today! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzoRyR_nlesKZuOlEjWRXQQ/join 🥩 New to the Carnivore Diet? Start Here → https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkkRSboRx_u2ymm3qL2PvUiwSa8KWvmk7&si=JxY6BlMx3A5RxtwX 👥 Join Our Carnivore Community On Patreon → https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyChaffeeMD 🎙 Listen to the Podcast → https://open.spotify.com/show/0WQtoPLuPMWWm3ZT3DYXzp?si=1bc2c970be8c421f 📸 Follow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/anthonychaffeemd 🎵 Follow on TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@anthonychaffeemd 📘 Follow on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/achaffee6 🐦 Follow on Twitter/X → https://x.com/anthony_chaffee ✅ Join my PATREON for early releases, bonus content, and weekly Zoom meetings → https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyChaffeeMD ✅ Book a 60-minute consultation with Dr. Chaffee → https://calendly.com/anthonychaffeemd/60-minute-consultation ✅ Don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe for more insightful content! ✅ Linktree → https://linktr.ee/DrChaffeeMD Sponsors & Affiliates: ✅ The Carnivore Bar → https://the-carnivore-bar.myshopify.com/?sca_ref=1743809.v3IrTuyDIi 💲 Discount Code: Anthony for 10% off all orders ✅ Stone and Spear tallow and soaps → https://www.stoneandspeartallow.com/?ref=gx0gql8b 💲 Discount Code: CHAFFEE for 10% off ✅ Carnivore T-Shirts → https://www.plantfreetees.org ✅ X3 Bar System → https://www.kqzyfj.com/click-100676052-13511487 💲 Discount Code: DRCHAFFEE ✅ Schwank Grill (Natural Gas or Propane) https://www.schwankgrills.com/ANTHONY98004 Free grill cover with the purchase of a Schwank Grills grill with Discount Code: ANTHONY98004 This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Dietary and lifestyle changes are only part of the complete health picture, the impact of which will depend on each person’s individual circumstances. It is important to stay under the care of appropriate health care professionals, whose advice should be sought before making any substantial dietary or other changes. #carnivore #weightloss #nutrition #diet