Transcribed by Aajonus.net & Rawmeatgang
F = Fred, A = Aajonus
F: Okay, I'm talking with Aajonus Vonderplanitz today, who's a world-renowned nutritionist. He's the creator of the primal diet. Now, Aajonus, I want to ask you about the Paleolithic, or the Paleo diet, and from what I know about it, it has something to do with the Paleolithic period where man ate some primitive foods or something like that. And some people confuse the two, your primal diet and the Paleo diet, and are they the same, or if not, what's the difference?
A: Well, I don't know anybody who's lived in the Paleolithic period that's still alive today. When people get theorizing like that, it makes me shudder a little bit. And these people who come up with what Paleolithic, or believe what Paleolithic people ate, they were hunters and gatherers, is all that we really think we know. I lived outdoors for three years. I lived off the land for three years. I traveled all the way from the United States down to Yucatan on a bicycle, living off the land the whole time. Sometimes I'd hang my bicycle up in a tree and go off in the woods for months. Lived with Indian tribes during that period, four Indian tribes, all the way up to Alaska. And these people who think they know what the Paleolithic people did and ate have not a clue. Whether they'd been in their backyard or to the park, you know, or taking a hike through a woods. When I lived outdoors, in the jungles and in the woods, there was no fruit. There were some berries once in a while, wild strawberries, wild berries, figs, something like that. The birds got them. Birds and squirrels. Humans rarely ever got anything. The only time I saw animals eating a lot of fruit that weren't birds was when I was in Alaska. And there was a field of blueberries. And it was full of grizzly bears eating blueberries all afternoon. And I didn't know there were grizzly bears there. I just ran into this field of blueberry bushes. And I just started eating and I saw these little hairy humps coming up over the tops of the blueberry bushes. You know, one stood up when I gave a cough and it was a grizzly bear. Well, I backed right out of there. But that's the only time I've seen a lot of fruit.
Fruit is only apparent and available when man cultivates it. And as far as we know, cavemen didn't cultivate. Paleolithic man didn't cultivate. Hunted, probably milked animals, probably did have some goats or sheep or centimammals that they kept. Because we have histories for thousands of years in Africa of milk tribes. Tribes that eighty percent of their, well, the Fulani, ninety percent of their diets, raw milk. The Maasai and Samburu, before the droughts, they lived seventy percent on raw milk. And then the rest raw meat. So, the idea that paleolithic man, the way it's presented now, the paleo diet is a lot of fruit. And a lot of meats and organ meats. And mainly no dairy. And there they've come to the conclusion, this group of people who seem to be united in their thinking, who haven't been out of their backyard probably, you know, that that's the way paleo man ate. And I guarantee you, my living outdoors, I just wish I had not been a vegetarian fruitarian at the time. Because I had to follow the agricultural belt around and take my food off into the wild. And when I didn't have it, I was starving because I didn't eat meat at the time. And it was a very bad diet. It was not healthy. A fruitarian, vegetarian diet. I got down to ninety-six pounds at one time. Right now I'm a hundred and eighty pounds. Can you imagine me at ninety-six pounds? It was pretty bad.
So, my diet is a primal diet, meaning basic. The most basic thing for the body that I've discovered. That doesn't mean those foods were available in quantity anywhere. I have fruits on the diet that are hard to get. You can't get them unless they're cultivated. And the birds and all those don't eat them. But they are medicine. They are remedies. Like in my book, We Want to Live. I give thousands of raw root food remedies for hundreds of common diseases. And those foods are not all that easy. However, my primal diet, the way I formulated it, as it worked, the better it worked, and working with formula, the better it progressed, and the better it worked with people to reverse diseases, I adjusted it. I still adjust it. I'm never finished exploring and discovering what can be better, what can work better. How can I get this to work faster? Most of the foods on the primal diet are raw dairy and raw meat. A little bit of vegetable juice and a tiny bit of fruit. And the fruit's always eaten with meats. And no fruit juices. There has to be a whole fruit with some kind of fat, so you don't get that sugar rush in the high. The high and low, manic-depressive kind of reaction. No matter how minor it may be, it can do some damage in your life, you know, in your emotional life, in your relationships.
Videographer: I'm going to ask you to repeat that, because you said fruit with meat. I don't think you meant that. I think you meant fruit with fat.
A: Yeah, did I say fruit with meat?
Videographer: Yeah, you did.
A: So, basically, the primal diet is mainly a raw dairy and raw meat diet. Heavy like the Maasai and the Samburu on milk, on dairy. Probably dairy is 60% of the diet. And probably 30% of the diet is, or 25% of the diet is meat. And various meats, I'm not talking about just red meat, any kind of flesh food is meat, I call it meat, because that's what it is. And fruit maybe 5% of the diet or less. And always eat fruit with the fats, so you don't have the sugar highs and lows, so you don't get manic depressive. Even for a few minutes of the day, they can spoil your relationships or your thinking. And a little bit of vegetable juice. And the fruits never, as fruit juice, have it as a whole fruit with some fat. So you don't have the high and the low. And basically that's a simple diet. But if you know how to prepare the foods, they're gorgeous, because anything you cook turns discolored, turns to an off-brown, or an off-green, or an off-red, no matter what it is. But when you're dealing with raw foods, the color is beautiful. And you can mix these in certain ways, like in my recipe book, The Recipe for Living Without Disease. All kinds of ways to make sauces for these raw meats to make them delicious. The difference between paleo diet, which is a fantasy of imagination, because nobody knows what the paleolithic ate, but if they go out and live off the land, they might find out. But nobody does. My diet is not a paleolithic diet. My diet is based on foods that work to heal the body, whether paleolithic had those foods available or not.