Will Eating Raw Meat Make You Sick?

As a raw carnivore the most common question I get asked is whether eating raw meat will make you sick.

People immediately assume I’m at high risk of food-borne illnesses like E. Coli, Salmonella, Listeria, and more. On top of that, they ask or assume I have parasites, worms, or other microbial infections as a result of eating raw meat.

Curiously, nobody was ever concerned when I ate mountains of raw produce or pre-packaged foods before I became a carnivore, the most common sources of food-borne illness.

What does the data say?

I try to base my life-decisions on good research, so below you’ll find data outlining the available reports of various food-borne illnesses and their source, including case and death rates.

*I think a lot of the data will surprise you, except the Listeria one which will probably line up with your long-held beliefs about the danger of raw foods (she’s a real doozy!).

TL;DR the data above

Okay, let’s sum up some of the extensive data above for you Scroll and Rolls™️((You’re welcome.)):

From the data, you’re actually less likely to get food-borne illnesses eating raw meat, eggs, or dairy, than eating pre-packaged food of any form, including raw produce! Let’s take a look. ?

Salmonella 2006-2022

E. Coli 2006-2022

Listeria 2011-2022

Look out for the Strawberries and Pomegranate Seeds if you want to avoid contracting Hepatitis A.

99 cases and 1 death have been reported due to a Campylobacter outbreak attributed to pre-packaged milk products. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to get Campylobacter from pet store puppies, outdoor obstacle races involving mud, or drinking untreated water (combined, responsible for 217 reported cases).

Cyclospora outbreaks have only ever been attributed to produce.

The only thing safer than eating raw meat, eggs, and dairy, is to become a Breatharian.

Why are humans susceptible to food-borne infections at all?

So if the problem isn’t raw meat, eggs, and dairy but actually produce and pre-packaged or cooked meat, eggs, and dairy… what is going on? Aren’t plants healthy?! Doesn’t cooking kill bad bacteria?!

Does native grass make cattle sick? Do antelope make lions ill? Do crocodiles die from eating wild animals?

We know that feeding non-native grasses that have been engineered to grow rapidly in the spring to cattle can make them sick with Tetany.

Interestingly, it’s normal for many carnivores to hunt the injured and sick animals in a herd, like mountain lions who target deer with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). If raw meat or sick animals cause disease why aren’t these carnivores dropping over dead eating their native diet?

And the acidity of the human stomach is closer to animals like the Buzzard and Vulture, scavengers that eat decaying animals.

Maybe humans aren’t actually omnivores? Maybe our native diet IS raw meat, eggs, and dairy… and eating produce and cooked, pre-packaged, foods are causing us to become sick.

Is the answer in our stomach acidity?

In the table above we can see that the human stomach has a pH of 1.5.

But how does the human stomach behave when eating an omnivorous diet? One study showed the pH of the stomach after eating a “standard meal” was between 3.3 and 5.3. Most infectious bacteria can thrive at a pH of 4.0, so this is very concerning.

FDA’s Guidance for Industry describes a “standard breakfast,” as applicable to food
effect studies. The standard breakfast takes the form of, “Thirty minutes before
drug administration, each subject should consume a standardized, high fat content
meal consisting of one buttered English muffin, one fried egg, one slice of American
cheese, one slice of Canadian bacon, one serving of hash brown potatoes, eight fluid
oz. (240 mL) of whole milk, six fluid oz. (180 mL) of orange juice.”

Intragastric pH and pressure profiles after intake of the high-caloric, high-fat meal as used for food effect studies Koziolek [2015] et al.

In the same study it took 4 hours after the meal for the stomach to regain a pH of 0 – 1, and the stomach still hadn’t emptied before lunch time arrived 6 hours after breakfast.

Imagine giving opportunistic bacteria 4-6 hours (or longer) in their ideal pH environment before emptying into the small intestine, which has a pH range of 5.7 – 7.4.

No wonder it’s estimated 80% of people with IBS have SIBO (small intestine bacteria overgrowth), and the number of “healthy” people with SIBO is completely unreported.

And what about the number of people suffering from systemic yeast or Candida overgrowth? Fun fact, the vagina is slightly acidic when healthy and becomes more alkaline when suffering from yeast overgrowth.

The most absurd cure…

One researcher proposes we need to “fix” the stomach acidity problem of the human body, making it less acidic in order to solve indigestion issues like heartburn, GERD, ulcers, etc.

They also propose it would do no harm to bypass stomach digestion of food altogether and leave that task up to the small intestine alone. What kind of madness is this?

We can intake almost ordinary food even after total gastrectomy, although we need to take food in small increments since the stomach cannot hold food. We are able to do so because the small intestine can digest and absorb food using various digestive enzymes without digestion in the stomach. Although impaired absorption of vitamins and minerals occurs due to the evolved absorption system of humans, the small intestine can still digest food. We captured how solid food is digested in the small intestine using capsule endoscopy and found that not only carbohydrates and meat but also the cytoplasm of plants are absorbed in the small intestine[5]. In other words, we endoscopically confirmed that the passage of current formed food through the stomach does not influence digestion in the small intestine. Because a patient who takes PPIs does not have any major digestive/absorption problems, the importance of gastric acid in the digestive system of humans is thought to be low. Nevertheless, the gastric acid level of humans is considerably high compared to that of many other animals.

Shunji Fujimori (2020) Gastric acid level of humans must decrease in the future

This reminds me of how common it was in the 1700s to cut off the horse’s tongue((If they wouldn’t stop sticking it out of their mouth.)) instead of being less abusive to their animal.

Why do we constantly believe the human body is the one at fault?

Perhaps the human body isn’t flawed at all, we just keep feeding it the wrong foods.

If we are accustomed to eating a diet that causes our stomach pH to be not only hospitable but ideal for infectious disease the danger isn’t in eating raw meat. The danger lies with eating “standard” meals that make us vulnerable to illness.