The raw food diet provides huge benefits to your health, it can be vegetables, fruits, grains, or legumes and meat. Eating raw meat sounds weird because not all cultures encourage it. Yet some international cuisines serve raw meat.
The raw food diet
Raw meat diet is not as popular as raw vegetarian diet. It is entirely risky to consume raw meat. No evidence claims eating raw meat can be entirely healthy. In fact, cooking meat will lessen vitamins and minerals, but it doesn’t mean we can have it raw. It can also cause some kind of long-term damage to your body. Our body is designed to digest cooked and light food, in such cases even chewing the raw meat itself is a tough process. Is raw meat good for you? This blog will help you to know more about it.
The Health Benefits of Eating Raw Meat
One of the major health benefits of eating raw meat is you can obtain the whole nutrients (animal enzymes) directly. Because of some infections like Salmonella, and Yersinia Campylobacter, etc, in such case doctors highly recommend eating cooked or half-cooked meat.
Some people’s taste buds are different, and they enjoy the raw taste and fresh smell of meat on plates. Some culture supports eating raw food, while others don’t. For example, Northern Canadian people have a tradition of eating raw whale and seal meat. In Turkey and Armenia, cig kofte is served. In Japan, sushi and sashimi are prepared with fish meat.
Some of the famous restaurants are serving raw meat varieties with oysters, beef carpaccio(Italy), Ossenworst (The Netherlands), Steak Tartare (France), Paris (South Texas), and Koi Soi (Thailand).
In 1934 The Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine was shared by Whipple, Minot, and Murphy on finding a cure for Pernicious Anemia. Whipple did research on dogs by adding raw liver to the diet. Minot and Murphy studied patients with pernicious anemia and a diet rich in the liver could control the disease. Here raw meat diet given as liver therapy for Anemia.
Raw Meat Diet – Pros & Cons
Raw meat contains animal enzymes that can be good for health. Since it’s fresh meat the bacteria could be more harmful.
On the contrary, loads of side effects are there in eating raw meat as they are contaminated by some bacteria like Salmonella, Yersinia Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, and Escherichia coli, leading to conditions:
- Pork and chicken commonly grow Salmonella bacteria, which can cause indigestion.
- In the USA the majority of people seem to be affected by salmonella disease. Reports state 125,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die every year.
- Trichinosis is an infection by eating raw pork as it is contaminated by larvae of a parasitic worm.
- Campylobacter bacteria contaminate raw meat as well as poultry. It also can cause sickness in humans.
Is raw meat safe or not?
It is unsafe to eat raw meat. Though it has many nutritional properties, consuming raw meat is still not advisable. Even if you want to eat it, kindly ensure that it’s fresh. A slight change in the temperature can cause harmful effects. For instance, warm temperature multiplies the bacteria. Moreover, try to get your doctor’s suggestion before eating raw meat. Because the raw food diet won’t suit everyone.