So we have a situation where the few who--for whatever reason, or stroke of fate, or neurosis about food!--have been successful in eating 100% instincto over the course of several years can easily get a damned big head about it. They may become increasingly petulant and dissatisfied with the "world at large" and consider themselves superior to not only the cooked masses, but the raw vegans and fruitarians as well. After all, an instincto is the quintessential Nature Boy or Earth Goddess in their fearless emulation of instinct even down to the consumption of dripping red meat, no? Well, not exactly. But since instincto theory is usually coined and promoted by 100% instinctos, it is not surprising that the 19-point-something of 20 well-intentioned people who fail to eat instinctively are dismissed as "just not dedicated enough" or "too addicted to cooked foods" or some such.

Having been around this particular block with my own loved one for years, I can attest how unpleasant it can be for both the one who is supposedly "there" (me previously, at 100% raw) and the one who is being dragged there (my wife previously--constantly struggling to maintain more than a couple of weeks in a row all-raw). I see now that there may be a much simpler reason that most people who try instincto fail: Instincto may simply be more unnatural than natural after so many generations (possibly thousands--we don't know for sure) of ancestors who have cooked their foods.

At present, it seems possible to me that humans may not be completely or perfectly adapted to an all-raw diet. On the other hand, surely we aren't perfectly or completely adapted to an entirely cooked diet. Everyone needs to find their own comfort zone with health as the goal, not "being the perfect instincto" as the goal.

I wonder whether we may have wandered into the territory of the double-edged sword after all these generations. Given our divergent ancestries, given our species' exploitation of so many diverse climates, given our cooked heritage since at least the late Paleolithic, I can see plausible reasons why no one particular diet, even one as flexible as instincto (which says anything is fair game as long as it is raw) could possibly be ideal for everyone. And perhaps all-raw isn't ideal for anyone, though a tiny percentage of folks do well with instincto as a long-term regime.

Whether instinctos get good results mostly because they are 100% raw, or whether they get good results mostly because they eschew grains and dairy, is an open question to me. Would instinctos be better off with some steamed veggies and some boiled lobsters? Would other (cooked) paleo-dieters be better off with a higher percentage of raw foods in their grainless, dairyless regime? And as far as I can see, few dieters in either group appear to be very interested in these questions. But WE are... so if you are an instincto experimenting with some cooked foods, or a paleo-dieter experimenting with more raw foods, how about dropping us a note (to Kirt Nieft) about how your experimenting is going?

Some of the foods which can be eaten according to human instinct are listed below by category. These categories are arbitrary to a degree. Foods listed within parentheses are found in more than one grouping. Of course this listing is nowhere near complete, but it does show the variety of foods available to an instincto.

FOODS AVAILABLE TO INSTINCTOS

Juicy Fruits

As you would expect, here, organically raised fruits and vegetables are preferred to chemically raised produce. Practiced instinctos who eat mostly organic or homegrown produce often taste "off-flavors" in ordinary supermarket produce. And the instinctive stop is said to come earlier with organic produce than with artificially fertilized produce. Why? Well, the theory of course is that organic foods (and more pointedly, wild foods) are more nutritious, and therefore less of them would be needed in order to fill our metabolic need for the food's nutrients, some of which may, perhaps, still be unknown to biochemists. But, of course, the best we can say here given current controversy about whether organic foods are really more nutrient-packed than commerically grown produce is... perhaps so, perhaps not, and keep an open mind.

For an animal food to be considered original, instinctos require that the animal must be fed exclusively raw undenatured food--something which rarely happens in commercial farming operations. Even animals raised under guidelines established for organic certification are not usually considered fit for instinctive consumption if they are overfed cooked, or even raw, grains. Meat, fat, marrow, and organs from game animals (at least those which don't have access to garbage heaps!) are highly prized by instinctos for their excellent flavor and clear taste-changes. Great care must be taken when obtaining instincto-quality animal foods commercially. Even free-range chickens are usually fed heaps of grains and processed feeds which denature them to a degree. The same is true for eggs.

Seafood, though polluted to some extent in the modern world, provides some of the clearest taste-changes of all--probably because most of it is still wild. Commercially raised fish are avoided because of the unnatural feeds used.

Honey can be extracted without heat and put into jars, but has a clearer change and fuller flavor when eaten from the comb. This assumes that the bees feed on plants grown without chemicals. Nearly every jar of honey available commercially has been mixed and heated to make it easier for bottling. Heating honey also makes the flavor milder. Instinctos consider the taste-change properties in honeys to be destroyed at temperatures only a few degrees above hive temperature. Even honey labeled as "raw" can legally be heated well beyond the point where instinct can evaluate it--that is, it won't stop tasting good until one has eaten more than they probably need. "Ruining the flavor" would be the instincto view of such a process, a view shared by honey connoisseurs around the world. If you want to experiment with honey, it is best to obtain comb honey.

Grains are not on the instincto menu unless they are germinated, at which stage they are commonly called sprouts. Nearly every grass seed, legume, and nut can be germinated and eaten instinctively. The big exception is wheat, which, even sprouted, does not have a proper taste-change--or so it is claimed. It is argued that today's wheat has been so thoroughly bred away from its wild progenitors that it will not properly interact with our instinct. Other sprouted grains are eaten by instinctos, usually in small amounts, since their taste often becomes unpleasant after only a couple mouthfuls, though of course it varies from person to person.

All forms of dairy products are avoided on the grounds that no dairy would have been consumed until the advent of agriculture, and because in nature we find no mammal who drinks milk beyond infancy. Many instinctos claim that raw dairy either isn't attractive or has no proper taste-change.

Outside of those exceptions (wheat and dairy), any plant or animal--or any part of any plant or animal--in nature can be consumed and provides a taste-change. According to instincto theory, the presence of a proper taste-change is our best judge of an original food. Defining "proper" is the big rub and a little more problematic, of course. ;-)

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