Carnivegan: An elite group of enlightened individuals who understand that eating meat is natural; Their diet consists solely of meat or products produced by animals.

Plant Killers: Groups of people (Also known as Vegans and Vegitarians) that insist upon Vegicide as a means for eating. PK's oppose Carnivegans, and often exhibit hostilty towards us. This hostility tends to stem from their underlying understanding that the Carnivegan lifestyle is what Nature intended.

Vegicide: The process of brutally and thoughtlessly killing innocent plants for the purpose of ingesting them. Carnivegans refuse to participate in this activity due to its immorality.

Veginazi: Large cross-section of Plant Killers that resort to the use of mental and physical abuse of Carnivegans in a last-ditch effort to convert to their lifestyle of vegicide. Insecurity breeds hostility, and the Veginazi is the largest offender.

Check out http://www.carnivegan.com/index.php?p=faq

I split a gut laughing. It's very humerous

That is a great site! I'll have to add this to my links on myspace.com.

"Veganism = The Al Qaeda of Vegetarianism"

Heh-Osama Bin-Gardnin' indeed

People have been expressing the notion that the more diverse the diet, the better it seems it should be. However, think of it this way: a grass-fed cow obtains all of it nutrients from. . . . .grass. Maybe different varieties of. . .grass, but still just grass. So a 1000 pound animal can grow all it's wonderful fat and muscle and innards on just one very basic subtance. grass.

And speaking of grass, I've oftened wondered what the real difference is bewteen grass and, say, the corn that is fed to some animals. What is grass? Just a bunch of indigestable (to us) starch? The cows can digest it, turn it to starch, or sugars, or they can eat the corn that might be fed to them and turn it to. . . starch. Maybe someone can set me straight, but what is the real difference between grass and corn, from a cows point of view?

I have no idea what green coffee tastes like nor of any easy way to try it, it is a very firm seed holding only ~10% moisture. Partially roasted, or under-roasted coffee does not taste very good, IMHO.

'Green' coffee is a term for the raw unroasted seeds of coffea arabica or robusta. It is not hard to roast your own coffee, there are machines on the market which do an excellent job of it. I find that hot-air type popcorn machines are not satisfactory, however. The home roasters are of two basic types, the externally heated or stove top kind and the electric-turned an heated drum or electric hot-air/fluidised-bed type (this is similar to the above mentioned popcorn machine- but is built for coffee). I have not seen the glass-jar Siemens machines for a while, they were last sold under the brand name Sirocco in the US. The Alpinroast machine is a drum type similar in design to most commercial roasters, I know several people, including my son- who have this machine. Do a Google on home roasters. I have a few of the Siroccos and an old, small German made hand-cranked drum- originally electric with two 600w coils but which I later converted to lpg gas with a burner from a small Cont espresso machine. It holds about 900 ml of green and produces a bit over a pound of finished roast. Coffee swells to 1-1/2 times the volume and loses ~10% of weight (moisture) during roasting.

Trust me, it is really quite easy to roast your own, and you then always have very fresh coffee. It will cost at least less than half what the same bean sells for at retail- the retail coffee industry marks up prices to about 3 or 4 times the wholesale cost. This is outrageous and is due to the very in-elastic demand for coffee. Roasters discovered this back in the '70's when there was a severe frost in Brazil. Wholesale coffee prices went through the roof, but consumption remained dead stable, thus the prices have never fallen, although coffee world wide is usually produced well in excess of demand.

The finest boutique coffees, with the notable exceptions of Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain, sell for about 2-3x the published price of Brazilian Santos, the benchmark coffee quoted in the financial page of most newspapers. You will get this price from any wholesale distributor so long as you buy a full bag, which is usually 60 Kg. Kona is packaged in 100 lb bags and Mexican in 88's. I am fond of PNG coffee, and the classic plantation there is Sigri. I buy one bag every few years, and supplement with smaller quantities of various kinds from wholesalers who will break bag quantities- there are few of these however. Some small roasters will sell you less than bag lots of green, but don't buy from them if they will not give you a much lower price than retail. You can find out the current wholesale price by calling an importer/distributor.

I do like fine Kona, and have actually imported several 5 kg lots of ExtraFancy grade directly- but it is still way too expensive to use for the daily cuppa. The Jamaican coffee is very hard to find, due to the Japanese practice of outbidding everyone else for the limited supply. Occasionally Starbucks wins a few barrels (Jamaican green is packed in small wooded barrels), but you can't tell one kind of their coffee from another after that mob has burned it up into a black, greasy mess. Real proper (Italian) espresso roast is a medium dark, dull finished brown, never greasy and never black like French roast.

I have ten coffee bushes (they are actually scraggly, multiple-stemmed shrubs, not trees), one 12 years old the rest 7, which produce a small harvest of very nicely flavoured coffee. Each and every coffee growing location around the world has a distinctive coffee. In Oz, most of the coffee is grown at too low an elevation for good body- arabica needs at least 750 m to develop proper acidity and body- we are at 900 m and have a northfacing slope, ideal as there is no frost in winter here.

did you all know that the longer you roast the less caffeine..go for darker roast

Actually the difference between a light and a French roast is as short as one minute and does not significantly affect the caffeine content. This is another 'urban myth'. A darker roast may even arguably have some carcinogens from the burnt nitrogenous materials in it, in a similar fashion to the production of those found in tobacco smoke...Boiled 'Turkish coffee' like the Arabs drink has less caffeine than filtered, and both have less than espresso, but this is due to the combination of tannic acid (slow to dissolve) and caffeine (rapidly soluble), which produces insoluble caffeine tannate which precipitates out. Caffeine itself (much like aspirin- a semi-natural compound hated by the drug manufacturers since it is so effective but not patentable) has been shown to be of great benefit to the body, a mild mental 'alerting agent' (rather than a true stimulant like amphetamine). It also improves oxygen transport and athletic performance, as well as showing some anti-cancer properties. I would not drink coffee if it had no caffeine in it- the oils and other compounds in coffee cause a mild insulin reaction, Thus- consuming a lot of it is 'fattening' by default...

Yes, fish store mercury in the flesh, in the fat and in the liver, PCB's are stored in the fat and liver. Both contaminants are a serious concern. I try to limit my consumption of wild or farmed-in-the sea fish. I am raising fish in my large farm dam.

Of course, regularity is the hall mark of a carnivorous dietary regime. Constipation is unknown, unless you eat too much cheese, and looseness is due either to excess fat over your bile supply, or too much espresso. Once a day or less is usual, as the fecal mass is simply discarded body-originating waste, not dead bacteria and indigestible vegetable residue.

My remark on the 'new paper' in no way implied any thing like a criticism of anyone else mentioning it. It anyone is that sensitive to simple statements, then by all means, don't stick around, my posts are intended for people who genuinely are interested in the dietary regime.

I eat when I remember to do so, since I personally don't experience hunger. Any time is ok. I think it is good to eat in the morning, but my main meal is in the afternoon or early evening. I sometime have a 'lunch' and sometime not, I have eaten up to 6 small steaks in a day and as few as one large one. Your blood glucose in invariable unless you ingest carbs, and you very quickly digest and absorb your meat/fat. Eating schedules are not a big deal like it is when you eat a mixture of foods which tax your system's limited ability to process and digest. It is always best not to go to bed while still digesting food, an all meat meal should take around one hour or so. The '3 hour rule' is therefore more than adequate. I retire sometime between 9 and 11 and I prefer to eat my evening meal around 5 or 6... I rise around 6:30 to 7 and have a cuppa and a protein powder and cream drink. Heavy food at dawn is just not attractive to me.

I am an unrepentant empiricist, and am not very interested in statistics. I have to admit I haven't a clue as to what the USDA has to say. You know the old saw, however: 'Statistics don't lie, but statisticians do".

Correct, however, meat is fully absorbed and thus actually a zero-residue food.

50-60% fat by calories is ok. 80% is about max. If you can only find a sandwich shop, ask them for a plate just of whatever meat they have, like rare roast beef and perhaps some fired or boiled eggs and whatever cheese they may have. The only eateries I have been unable to find food at are vegan/vegetarian restaurants, and those fortunately are relatively thin on the ground.

Pemmican is a complete meal replacement in and of itself. I will post a complete guide to preparation next. Avoid anything commercial which claims to be either 'jerky' or 'pemmican'- the are damaged by the commercial food laws requiring the use of excessive heat and adding chemical preservatives, thus are really bad for your health.

The truth no vegan can ever accept is that ALL forms of life, whether plant fungus or animal are conscious. It is just that we animals are unable to communicate or 'hear' the consciousness of plants. Plants on the other hand seem quite able to do so with both other plants and animal in remarkable fashions. There is an orchid that not only looks exactly like a female bumble bee, but also smells like one, leading the males to attempt to couple with the blossom and in process getting the two pollen-masses (pollinia) stuck on their heads. The can't copulate with the flower of course, but then visits another blossom and deposits the load of pollen in a further vain attempt to mate. Since a plant cannot see or smell (or can it?), how could this ever have come about? A few clever scientists like James Backster have found plants do respond to threat, thoughts and music, by hooking them up to galvanic instruments.

I once communed with a great and ancient redwood tree in Muir Woods CA, while under the effects of a strong dose of DMT. Trust me, these giant trees at least are far more 'conscious' and transcendentally aware than any animal- including us. All food is derived from living things. There is certainly some compassionate value in the quick death a food animal experiences versus the way in which people treat food plants.

Grass (of various kinds) is quite different in structure and composition to the seeds of grasses, which is what all grain including corn (maize) actually is. The ruminant is specialise by commensal bacteria 'helpers' in its multiple stomachs coupled with re-mastication to digest grass, but not a large percentage of grass-seed. To force the animal to mange on a high intake of seed, the bacterial soup in each stomach or rumen must be replace by unnatural mixes of other bacteria. That this strategy is successful is self evident or the industry would fail. The animal builds its tissue from what ever is fed to it, and herbivore are capable unlike carnivores and most 'omnivores' to make up any missing bio-materials in their own bodies. Interestingly rats can somehow synthesise missing vitamins in their intestines, and then eat their own droppings to counter deficiencies. THAT is truly impressive. Rats, crocodiles, cockroaches, and ants will long survive on this planet Earth, and will be around long after humanity has joined the dinosaurs.

PEMMICAN- how to make the real stuff.

I HAVE made jerky and pemmican for 47 years. Avoid any commercial 'jerky' or 'pemmican'.

YOU have to make your own, but it is simple, really. The principle is low, controlled heat, no additives like salt or 'marinade' and very fresh meat and fat.

I OFFER the correct way to prepare true pemmican, based on the principles developed by the Native American plains people. It has been done this way for countless generations. I do not recommend making 'holiday pemmican' containing dried fruit- it willnto keep and has far too many carbs.

WE will use beef.

I RECOMMEND bottom round, with very little marbling- marbling makes drying slower, but while it may taste better as a partially dried, short lived and leathery jerky, it is counterproductive for making fully-dried jerky for pemmican.

THE RULE for drying jerky is use only very FRESH, NEVER FROZEN MEAT.

CUT into 1/8' slices/strips, ADD NOTHING.

DRAPE over rack, in oven- with door slightly ajar (adjust).

PLACE an incandescent light bulb of about 100w in the bottom and connect up through an adjustable thermostatic switch, with the sensor placed on the top shelf. Set to hold 104F/40C. Test with a good quality thermometer- jerky is going to be comparatively expensive to make, so you don't want to mess it up.

DRY only at precisely 40C (104F) no more, no less. Dry until dark in colour and very brittle/friable. The commonly seen 'leather-dried' jerky, while it might seem nice to chew on, will not keep very long without refrigeration, and cannot be used to make pemmican. Fully dried jerky is very tasty but is crumbly in texture, not 'chewy'. Store fully dried jerky in an air tight container, and check the smell from time to time for signs of deterioration.

DO not use marrow-fat, it spoils very quickly and will go rancid. If you use 'cod fat', that is,suet from the outside of the carcass it will yield a softer and perhaps nicer flavoured pemmican, but the hard 'kidney suet from around the kidneys will give a firmer and much longer-keeping pemmican, if that is what you are after.

RENDER the suet into tallow by placing 3/4" think slices on a rack in a pan in the oven at NO MORE than 250F. A higher temperature gives the tallow a burnt smell and taste and discolours the fat, lower temps take forever and may not properly dry out the tallow.

PROPER, long keeping pemmican is an even mix of dried lean and fat, 50/50 by WEIGHT (80/20 by calories). No berries or additives of any kind should be used, as they will cause rapid spoilage and are inappropriate if you are on a zero carb or very low carb diet.

WEIGH a portion of the crispy-crunchy totally dried jerky.

POWDER the jerky thoroughly. It will crumble to a powder very easily if it has been properly and thoroughly dried. It is best to process the jerky while still warm from drying to make sure it is very dry.

COOL the rendered liquid tallow to warm but not uncomfortably warm to your skin.

WEIGH AND POUR an equal weight of the warm liquid tallow onto the dry powdered jerky, mix and compress into a firm greasy mass- excluding all air.

PACK the fresh, soft pemmican into a dry container- fill until all air is excluded and seal tightly against moisture. It will keep at a cool room temperature, without refrigeration, for up to 30 years if it has been made with kidney suet/tallow. Perhaps less long if from cod suet. Jerky will not usually keep a year- even in a sealed jar. I doubt anyone will be able to store pemmican long enough for it to be a problem anyway- if you like it, unless you have enough ambition to make a lot of it.

TO EAT: Warm up some water (not hot), cut off a lump of pemmican and mash it in the water until you have a warm gruel. It is very greasy and hard to eat dry, but is very tasty as a gruel. To keep all the nutrients, it must never have been subjected to a temperature above 40C/104F. It will feed you as a single food, with no deficiencies in nutrition for a year or more, it even prevents scurvy.

JERKY requires added fat, to balance the protein. Unless you can add fat from another source, it is not good to eat it straight for very long by itself. Alone, lean jerky soon causes dysentery and debilitation from 'protein poisoning' (i.e.,'rabbit starvation').

Bear,

You have said a person could live on nothing but steaks. What about eggs? Are eggs complete food? And, if so, would one need to consume them raw? And, what about fowl versus herbivores? Is chicken or turkey meat complete food? Could a person live on nothing but chicken thighs? Just curious. I have always thought that red meat was the best source of nutrients, but didn't know about other animal foods. I think I am going to feed my cats just ground chicken (not sure if I should include chicken liver and heart). If they can live on nothing but raw chicken, could a human live on nothing but cooked chicken? BTW... you are a refreshing wealth of knowledge! Thanks for being here!

Thanks for the coffee info and the pemmican recipe, Bear; it is awesome!
I gonna need help from my do-it-yourself friend, as I have no idea how to connect a bulb to a thermostat! But apart from that, it seems relatively easy.

I have posted my take on the nutritional equivalence of red meat, fowl, fish and eggs/cheese. Any and all red meat is a complete food. Probably fowl is too, but you need twice as much mass to equal. Fish may not be fully complete, depending on species etc, but that is only my conjecture, it still would require triple the mass of red meat to equal. So far as eggs and cheese, I do not consider them fully complete foods in isolation (or only combined with each other), and you would need quadruple the mass of red meat to equal anyway. Even with an assumption they were complete, you simply would have serous trouble eating the equivalent masses each day of the lower-value two...the question really is moot. I don't really feel that posing hypothetical questions is going to carry us very far down the path. I think that all the fiddling around and finding ever more exotic ways to question the validity of meat as a complete food and cast various forms of doubt on the 'values' is counter productive. If you just would stop all the futzing and eat, it will soon become evident. In fact from most of the posts it has done so in virtually all the writer's experiences, only those who are obstinately clinging to non-meat foods are not progressing or are progressing very slowly.

I really enjoy all the interest people are showing my information. I have a vast store of meat-related info, and am happy to share it with everyone. I do apologise for my occasional loss of patience, but after following this 'aberrant path' for so many years, I have heard it all already.

I have managed to find out many of the simple truths hidden down amongst the fine details- things not usually considered by the majority of people. Life is fractal in nature, and like the statement in the Kybalion, 'as above, so below'- almost every aspect of the truth in life can be found on each and every level, beautiful in its balance and amazing in its complexity. I think that is why I became an artist when I discovered quite by accident I had a native talent for making beautiful images from anything with my hands, without any training. I have never liked ugly art. Many fine artists make ugly, confronting art as a way of registering protest, but I can't do that. Protest can be beautiful. The songs of Bob Dylan in the '60's and Ben Harper today are perfect examples of protest in the form of beautiful art.

But I digress....

Bear,
i am quite interested in your way of eating but just don't know if i could ever do it because i am afraid i would be missing something vital. For one, i dont have the money for a bunch of refridgerators and freezers, i have no coffee plants in my yard, i don't know if i could afford to eat too many steaks, which would leave me with alot of chicken and eggs.I also can't afford coconut and palm oil very often. Around here i never see brains and marrow and all these other body parts available.
Let me ask you this, if i were to eat hamurger, chicken, fish, bacon, ham, shrimp, pot roast, round steak and a good cut of steak once in a while, and maybe an occasional liver with eggs, cream, coffee, olive oil, mayo and butter..for the rest of my life...would i do ok? would i be 100% healthy? Seriously, give me your assesment..because those are the foods i eat and have available to me for the most part!

Sure.

hamburger, chicken, shrimp, fish...

Good.

bacon, ham...

Not good: salt and preservatives, poor nutritional values, no vitamins.

pot roast...

'Pot roast' is not a cut or kind of meat, it is a term for a dish made of very, very cooked/stewed, low quality 'stew' meat-with-vegetables. Not good, contains vegetables and the meal is too well cooked- most of the nutritional value is destroyed.

What about lamb?

Most cuts of meat are tender when raw and not very tough if blood rare, you should not be cooking meat any further than that.

round steak and a good cut of steak once in a while...

My habit, back in my ballet days when I had very little money to live on, around $50/week for everything including my 10 classes each week and $50/month for my tiny single apartment (room), was to always check the local newspaper for supermarket meat specials, and travel to each market to buy that cut. Since most people had (and still have) a severe fat-phobia, the meat on special was always trimmed very lean, so I paid only for my lean. I would ask the butcher on duty if he could give me some fat (for free) to use in cooking, they always did, and usually generously, so most of my daily caloric requirements cost me nothing.

and maybe an occasional liver with eggs, cream, coffee, olive oil, mayo and butter...

Mayo and olive oil are not real good for you, mayo is heavy with polyunsats and salt, with some sugar, and olive oil is mostly unsats. You don't need any vegetable oils to be truthful, stick to animal fat. Buy only unsalted (sweet cream) butter.

Do I need to repeat? red meat is a COMPLETE food, you don't have to have variety for your body, it only 'feeds' your mind.

for the rest of my life...would i do ok? would i be 100% healthy? Seriously, give me your assessment..because those are the foods i eat and have available to me for the most part!

I think you just need to be more creative in your search for meat bargains. I consumed up to 5000 cal/day while studying ballet and my cost of food was less than half that of my fellow mixed-diet students. I think I spent about $30/month, or one dollar a day- and sometimes less. Of course I wouldn't expect to see prices today like those back in 1960, but meat on special should be relatively low by today's standards. I even ate a lot of 'lamb breast'- at 9 or 10 cents a pound it being about half bone was not too bad a deal. I bought 'pot roast cuts' like 'seven bone' or shoulder at around 30cents/pound, it was not tough if cooked blood rare and actually had a very nice flavour, different from sirloin or rib eye. 'Flank' from the belly is very lean and tasty, it is good for making your own hamburger.

Your 'fear' is just your acculturation speaking from the depths of your unconscious mind, telling you, in your mother's voice, to 'eat your veggies' or suffer from some unnamed, perhaps unmentionable form of malnutrition. You can and should simply relax, get on with life and ignore this.

Bear,

I really like this way of life even before I read this thread but really as the brevious poster said meat is ssooooooo expensive, here in Egypt there is no any kind of cheap meat thats why I eat a lot of eggs,
please tell us what to do?
Thanks,
Hanan

Quick question for you, Bear.

All of this is ringing true, and confirming what I've felt for years. I've always done "well" with low- or no-carb eating, but I fear I might have been getting too much protein. I was up there around 50% fat, 45% protein, and the rest carbs that come with cheese, eggs, and the occasional veggie. I recently had a bunch of tests run because of unexplained weight gain (20 pounds in about 5 months, unable to lose it again). Hormone issues (as in, "I'm out of estrogen and I've got a gun"), adrenal fatigue, thyroid, etc.

The one test result that somewhat concerns me is my BUN, which is a measure of how well your kidneys are working. Mine came back at 25 ("normal" range is 5 - 20). I looked up what this means, and the site I went to said that having an out-of-range high reading means you're on a high-protein diet, you're dehydrated, etc.

My protein used to be around 120 grams a day (I'm 5'6" and currently weigh 165 -- I feel MUCH better at 150, and would probably feel a WHOLE lot better down at 140). But I can't seem to get there. And now the thing is, no matter how much or how little I eat, or how much or how little I work out (lifting and cardio), I don't lose, but then again, I don't gain either.

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit.

Do you think that eating 120 grams of protein (45% of calories) with 50% fat is too much protein and not enough fat? Do you think my test results will improve by keeping my protein around 80 grams and fat around 142 grams? This works out to be 80% fat and 20% protein. No veggies. I've been doing these levels for a couple weeks now.

I'm curious what you or any of the others think? And I apologize for asking "personal" questions in what should be a discussion thread. I'm just very frustrated here.

Thanks so much.

Just curious, in fish, how can one differentiate between fat and meat?