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Alyssa Luck

Alyssa Luck

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A word on raw meat, carnivory, and compassion towards animals

Alyssa Luck · Oct 1, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Note: this is one of my oldest posts, written when I was 19. My philosophy about food ethics has evolved considerably over the past decade – for instance, I no longer believe that the most “compassionate” diet is necessarily one devoid of any animal products, since the animals we’ve domesticated arguably have much to gain through their symbiotic relationship with humans – but in any case, most of what I wrote below still resonates deeply with me, and I’m quite proud of my past self to have realized many of these things at a relatively young age.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the recent story about this man who has eaten nothing but raw meat for the past 5 years. Chances are, you reacted in disgust, recoiling at the mere thought of eating the raw flesh of an animal (despite the fact that you have, in fact, eaten sushi on numerous occasions). I have to admit, some of the pictures definitely made my stomach turn a little bit.

I wasn’t surprised by the comments on the various news articles, calling him vile, disgusting, and mentally ill, and calling his diet a ‘weird food addiction.’ But I was surprised that even in Paleo circles, his story elicited a similarly negative reaction. I would’ve expected ancestrally-minded people to be a little more open-minded, and I don’t want to call out anyone specifically, but some of the comments were unbelievably ignorant.

I just want to bring a little perspective to the situation. The first complaint is that eating raw meat is ‘disgusting.’ I hope it’s pretty obvious to everyone that this reaction is only because we aren’t used to the idea. If you grew up in a completely vegan society, you would think that eating any meat at all is ‘disgusting,’ but because we’re so used to it, nobody bats an eye at the thought of eating a cooked chicken breast. As Americans we tend to find the idea of eating bugs revolting, even though billions of people around the world eat bugs regularly without a second thought. And if we weren’t used to consuming dairy, the thought of drinking the warm liquid from a squishy pink appendage dangerously close to the rear end of a cow would probably not be that appealing.

My point is that there’s nothing inherently ‘disgusting’ or ‘vile’ about eating raw meat; we just aren’t used to it.

The second complaint is that he seems ‘extreme.’ Well, yes. But many people consider even a ‘full Paleo’ diet to be restrictive, and subsets such as GAPS even more so. And of all people, those following a Paleo diet should understand that sometimes, we need to be extreme to solve our health issues. We don’t really have a choice. Many of the news sites covering this man’s story conveniently leave out the reason for his raw carnivorous diet, but the fact is, he can’t eat any other foods without getting sick. If raw meat was the only thing you could eat without vomiting, what would you do?

And finally, the point I really wanted to address – the idea that because he slaughters the animals himself and eats their meat raw, he is somehow dangerous, malicious, mentally ill, cruel, brutish, or barbaric.

Let’s think about compassion towards animals for a second. The most compassionate diet would be one where you eat no animal products at all, no mass-produced products that cause pollution that could endanger wildlife, and no mass-farmed products that end up causing the death of many small creatures during harvest. So basically, you eat plants that you either grew yourself or purchased from a small organic farmer. (Whether such a diet is even possible depends on whether B12 supplements can be made without harming animals. Anyone know? I couldn’t find much info on how B12 supplements are made.)

The next step would be adding some animal products, but not meat. The animals don’t have to die to give you milk or eggs, so that would be the next level of animal compassion. This probably seems painfully obvious. Everyone knows that vegans are the most compassionate and vegetarians are next, right?

But here’s where it gets fuzzy. After vegetarianism, what’s the next step in animal compassion? (Hint: it’s not the vegetarian reluctantly accepting a slice of dry chicken breast or tuna at their parents’ concerned urging.)

I think it would look surprisingly similar to what the raw meat guy is doing.

Granted, the quantity of meat in his diet makes it not ideal from a compassion standpoint. But the method, which people seem to be so offended by, is spot on.

If you’re going to take that ‘compassionate vegetarian’ diet we had earlier and add some meat to it, you want to do it in the most humane, respectful way possible. How do you ensure that the animal is killed humanely? The same way you ensure that anything else in your life is done correctly – you do it yourself, or you directly supervise the person doing it.

And how do you show respect for that animal, and make sure that no more animals need to die than necessary to meet your needs? You eat all of it. Everything. Organs, blood, connective tissue, meat, and everything in between. And that’s exactly what this man is doing.

Contrast that with what the majority of Americans do. First, many of us are in denial about the fact that what we’re eating actually used to be a living, breathing creature. You can tell because people get offended and uncomfortable when their meat looks too much like the animal it came from. Few people buy whole fish, because guess what? They look like fish! And think about how many fewer Thanksgiving turkeys Food Lion would sell if they still had the heads attached.

Second, most of us don’t care how the animal was killed. We certainly don’t care enough to find out how it was done, much less do anything about it. In fact, we’d really just rather not know. Yet somehow, in our society, that is more acceptable than killing the animal yourself.

And finally, we don’t want anything to do with the ‘odd bits’ of the animal. We would much rather have ten cows die for us so we can eat nothing but ribeye steaks and ground sirloin, than have one cow die for us and be forced to eat the organ meats and other ‘lesser’ parts. But just think about how different the reaction to this man’s story would be if he only ate raw liver and raw muscle meat that he purchased from the meat counter at Whole Foods. I almost guarantee that people would be far more accepting, despite the fact that at least three times (my guess) as many animals would have to die to feed him. How does that make sense?

Like I said, I wasn’t surprised in the least to see the negative backlash in the comments of the news sites. As a society, we are spoiled, selfish, and deluded when it comes to consuming animals, and sensationalist and judgmental towards people who are significantly different from the societal norm. But even in the ancestral community, this is clearly something we all need to work on. I remember reading a post by Liz on a similar topic, and feeling sad that I was so detached from the source of my food. I’ve certainly come a long way – I used to be squeamish about eating even ‘normal’ cuts of meat, and now I eat tongue and liver, make bone broth, and almost always buy my meat from the farmers’ market. But I still have a long way to go.

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Hi! I’m Alyssa. I like thunderstorms and cats, hate wearing shoes, and enjoy devising extensive research projects for myself in my free time. This is me in Bali with a monkey on my shoulder. And this is my blog, where I muse about health-related topics and document my relentless self-guinea pigging. If you want to know more about me, click here!

alyssa.luck

alyssa.luck
Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone who made 28 the best yet - excited for 29🥰

(PS. In case anyone wants to know what it’s like in my head, I was going to write something like “year 28” or “my 28th year” but then I realized that the year between your 28th and 29th birthdays is not your 28th year of life, it’s your 29th year. I am turning 29 because I have been alive for 29 years. So then I had a whole thing about how to word it without being inaccurate and ended up going with what you see above which is vague and weird but the point is it was a good year and I love all the people in my life dearly)
Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipt Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipton, who earned a PhD in developmental biology in 1971 and was an anatomy professor and academic researcher in the 70s and 80s. Despite the book's presentation and Lipton's background, this is not a science book. It is an exposition of an ideology, supported by haphazard and poorly contextualized nuggets of evidence, rhetorical leaps, and a mind-boggling overuse of analogies. 

The book largely failed to deliver on its promised content. What it does is argue for the primacy of the environment over DNA in controlling life; propose that the cell membrane rather than the nucleus is the "brain" of the cell; invoke quantum physics to explain why modern medicine fails; explain that our behavior is largely controlled by our subconscious mind; inform parents that they therefore have a great deal of control over the destiny of their children; and conclude that humans must become nonviolent protectors of the environment and of humanity because Everything Is Connected.

It’s not that these points aren’t relevant to the topic at hand - they are. But they were not connected in a coherent way that would explain how “belief” actually works (like…biologically), and the treatment of scientific concepts throughout was careless, or perhaps disingenuous.

I think he's correct about many things, some of them being common knowledge. For instance, the "new" science of epigenetics is now old news, as is the critical role of parenting and early environment in shaping a child’s future. But however important these and attendant concepts may be, the book did not do a good job explaining, supporting, or connecting them. 

As far as practical guidance, he refers the reader to a list of resources on his website, which is fine, but I expected some scientific insight into how/why those modalities work. None was given. 

On the plus side, the book was quite thought-provoking, and I came away with loads of references and topics to follow up on. My favorite line? "There cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that a theory is not fully correct."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382), as quoted in the introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra because I like the translation better.
This paper totally changed the way I think about e This paper totally changed the way I think about early nervous system development and the relationship between physiology and sociality. 

The authors propose that newborn babies are not inherently social, and have just one goal in life: physiological homeostasis. I.e. staying alive. This means nutrients, warmth, and regulation of breath and heart rate, i.e. autonomic arousal (it’s well-accepted that newborns sync their breathing and heart rate with caregivers through skin to skin contact). 

All these things are traditionally provided by a loving caregiver. So what the baby experiences during the first weeks of life, over and over, is a shift from physiological perturbation to homeostasis (a highly rewarding event inherently) REPEATEDLY PAIRED with things like the sound of a caregiver’s voice and seeing their face. Thus, over time, the face/voice stimuli become rewarding as well. 

The authors argue that THIS is the beginning of humans’ wiring for sociality, and may explain why loving social interactions can have such a profound regulating effect on physiology throughout life: because the brain was trained for it at an early age. 

This framework holds all kinds of fascinating implications for what happens if that initial “training” isn’t so ideal. What if the return to nutritional homeostasis via feeding is paired with negative expressions and vocalizations rather than loving ones, perhaps as could occur with PPD? What happens if the caregiver has poor autonomic regulation, such that social stimuli become paired with cardiorespiratory overexcitement in the baby? Could that have potential for influencing later introversion vs extroversion? (Because if social interaction is paired with autonomic overexcitement, that could lead to social interaction literally being more energetically draining, which is what introverts experience. Thoughts?)

For my energy metabolism enthusiasts: Table 1 in the paper draws a link between metabolic rate and sociality across species. Swipe for a screenshot. 

Anyway, check out the paper! It’s free, just google “growing a social brain pdf.”
I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple day I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple days to have two tooth implants placed, and I think I’ll take the opportunity to have a little heart-to-heart with my subconscious mind. A bit of medically-assisted self-hypnosis, if you will. 

I randomly stumbled upon these papers a couple months ago - an RCT showing reduced post-op pain in patients who listened to recorded positive messages while under general anesthesia, plus a post-hoc analysis of the same data that found reduced post-op nausea and vomiting in a subset of high-risk patients. 

The full review paper from the first slide is unfortunately in German, but it has long been recognized that even when unconscious, the patient is listening (for better or for worse). 

It boggles my mind that it isn’t standard of care to have patients listen to recordings like this while under sedation, considering that almost nothing could be easier, safer, or cheaper, and we have at least some evidence of significant efficacy. I mean c’mon, what more could you want from an intervention? 

(Yeah, I know. Profit. If anyone still thinks that our medical system operates with patient well-being as the foremost goal, you’re deluding yourself.)

“There should be a fundamental change in the way patients are treated in the operating room and intensive care unit, and background noise and careless conversations should be eliminated.”

“Perhaps it is now time to finally heed this call and to use communication with unconscious patients that goes beyond the most necessary announcement of interventions and is therapeutically effective through positive suggestions. When in doubt, assume that the patient is listening.”
If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have y If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have you moving your eyes or tilting your head, you've probably encountered the work of Stanley Rosenberg. The exercises he created and introduced in his 2017 book now appear in instructional videos all over the internet. 
 
The book itself has much to recommend it: it's accessible, it's practical, it's inspiring. But it has one major flaw: the solid practical and informational content regarding the cranial nerves is framed in terms of the scientifically dubious polyvagal theory. 
 
I particularly enjoyed the book as an introduction to the therapeutic arena of bodywork, of which Rosenberg is a skilled practitioner. His book is full of case reports that demonstrate how immensely powerful extremely subtle movements and physical manipulations can be. These do need to be kept in perspective: it's a small sample size of the most remarkable cases, and the results were achieved within the supportive clinical environment of a skilled practitioner. You can tell from his descriptions how refined his technique is. But nevertheless, it was a paradigm-shifting read for me, and the exercises give you something concrete to play around with. 
 
The book also brought the cranial nerves and the concept of “social engagement” to the fore as arbiters of health. Rosenberg has a solid background in cranial nerve anatomy and shares many interesting tidbits and considerations that you don’t typically hear; for instance, the potential impact of dental and orthodontic work on cranial nerve function.
 
So, is it worth reading? If any of the above piques your interest, go for it! Just read my post on polyvagal theory first – you can use the book to practice separating the wheat (solid informational content) from the chaff (pseudoscientific framing). If nothing else, the book is a nice reminder that genuine healers who get lasting results for their patients do exist.

But if you just want to try the exercises, you can easily find them all on YouTube. 

“You learn techniques to understand principles. When you understand the principles, you will create your own techniques.” -Stanley Rosenberg
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