Eating some things Raw can be great....

but Cooking made us Human. Its no Coincidence that we are the only animal that regularly cooks its food, and the only animal with our brain to body ratio that has dominated the globe.

In addition to making food more bioavailable and calories and nutrients easier to digest, cooking allows some of the antinutrients, lectins, etc to be destroyed or limited when it comes to most vegetables/plants. Meat is another animal :)

Some things are important to have raw for bacteria's sake, hence why fermented foods are so health beneficial, but technically, those are bacterially cooked foods.

Other than potentially Bacteria, what does raw get you thats worth the antinutrient/lectin load being much much higher?

I've eaten 5-8 raw eggs every day for the past 2-3 years. I buy free-range fertile eggs and have never had any problems. My cholesterol is perfect and I feel really good. I also eat about a half-pound of (grass-fed) ground beef or ground bison every day that I would consider 'seared'. Cooked outside but generally pretty cold inside.

'We want to live' by Aajonus Vanderplanitz is a really interesting book about raw foods.

I don't have an educated opinion about raw, but I like tartare and sashimi. My wife, whose neighbour was a beef farmer, grew up eating handfuls of raw ground beef.

I ran across this TED Talk that I thought was interesting - gets into it a bit.

Check it out.

I can't recommend any specific books, but conventional wisdom suggests you only eat meat raw when it is fresh, and not previously frozen. While the freezing process does kill off bacteria, determining the freshness of the meat when it comes frozen is more difficult, and the potential bacterial growth while you wait for the meat to defrost is a possible concern.

For hefty cuts of meat, the concern of salmonella is mitigated by the density of the meat; only the exterior is more prone to contamination. The problem with ground meats is that because of the increased surface area, contamination is more likely.

I'm a big fan of tartare, but if I make it, I ensure it's freshly ground and from a good source. Better yet, buy a meat grinder, and grind your own meat from better cuts of meat.

While it's reasonable to suggest that eating raw meat is fine (our ancestors naturally did), it didn't take long for mankind to discover how to preserve meat; it's simply not practical to only eat fresh kills.

To mitigate health concerns, we eat our red meat rare - the searing takes care of the external threat of contamination, while the inside remains as close to raw as I think is reasonable for general consumption.

Edit: Also worth mentioning is that besides Europeans who eat tartare, and the Japanese who are known for eating raw fish, Ethiopians eat raw beef in dishes like kitfo, which are heavily seasoned and spicy. I've often wondered if the heavy spices in such dishes act as a sort of temporary preservative as well.

I lurv carpaccio and have always wanted to try making it at home, and your question has inspired me to give it a try.

If you freeze meat for at least 15 days it is then safe to eat raw, don't know where I heard it, I think from the Weston A. Price site.

I think that you need to look at the traditional meat eaters around the globe, they, as a matter of course will eat raw meat (especially organ meat) along with cooked meat. Liver is absolutely amazing eaten cooked very lightly and raw in the middle, as fresh as possible.

Not sure about any books per se on eating raw paleo, as most raw foodists concentrate on the vegetable side of things.

But I found some good links:

This forum looks active:

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/

and this is an interesting site:

http://rawpaleodiet.vpinf.com/

with some more links on this page:

http://rawpaleodiet.vpinf.com/links.html.

Or to get straight into the recipes:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_omh5NVW1jAg/TKXXL4z-bkI/AAAAAAAABzQ/H_qUXTgSVfI/s1600/10-raw-meat-recipes.jpg

3 years of eating raw meats and offal and i feel better each day. i do admit i miss a good char, but i cannot stand the taste, texture or digestive issues cooked meat gives. rawpaleodiet.com