Chicken :/

[Nikki Young]

I'm wondering if chicken is truly paleo... Because eating raw chicken is dangerous due to the risk of getting salmonella and following a paleo diet you should only eat what you can eat raw.

Is this only an issue in un-healthy chickens? So a chicken running around back in the HG days wouldn't have any traces of salmonella or something?

[Garrett Smith]

Nikki,
Eating raw chicken is not as dangerous as "they" would have you believe, especially when it is sourced from good places.

If you'd like to eat some raw chicken and still be pretty safe about it, cube the chicken and put it in a marinade of lemon juice, fresh crushed garlic, and maybe a couple drops of wild oregano oil. Let it sit in the fridge in a closed jar for a couple of days. Chicken ceviche! Nothing is likely living through that marinade. I used to do this when I was on the "Primal Diet" and never had a single problem.

Any animal is Paleo--salmonella as a problem bug is due to modern practices. Salmonella is actually a "normal" inhabitant of the human digestive tract.

[Darryl Shaw]

I don't know where you got the idea that paleo is a raw food diet from but there's evidence that humans have been controlling fire for at least 1.5 million years and I'm sure it wouldn't have taken too long for them to discover that the taste and texture of certain foods was improved by cooking.

Bones hint at first use of fire.

HUMAN EVOLUTION: Did Cooked Tubers Spur the Evolution of Big Brains?

[Thomas Bailly]

first time I've ever heard of Paleo being raw food only.
I've eaten raw salmon right out of the ocean but raw chicken holds zero appeal.

[Garrett Smith]

Nowhere in either of the above posts by Nikki or I did we say anything about Paleo being raw food only.

I do personally tend towards the idea that if a food *can't* be eaten raw, then it probably wasn't eaten much by our paleolithic ancestors. See (most) legumes and grains in general. Note that all of the foods on Cordain's paleo list typically can be eaten raw (although much more value is obtained from tubers if they are cooked, as Darryl often notes).

Raw chicken isn't that exciting, but it can be done, I'm here to tell the tale.

The *Primal* Diet is a raw food diet (raw meat, raw dairy, raw honey, raw eggs, etc...), that's one I did for a while. I did not do well on the obscene amounts of raw dairy it called for...

[Mike ODonnell]

I only eat chickens from Buffalo....they are spicier!

[Nikki Young]

Thanks for the replies. In regards to the raw food diet statement i didn't mean you could only eat things raw when following a paleo diet, but as Garrett said "that if food *can't* be eaten raw, then it probably wasn't eaten much by our paleolithic ancestors." This is what i was intending to imply by saying that.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear it's mainly modern practices which are the cause of any salmonella problems. I had no doubt chicken was paleo but then a friend of mine started stating all this information about salmonella which i don't know much about, i wanted to get a bit more info about it, the best place for that is asking people who follow a paleo diet

So is it solely because of what the chickens are eating and their living conditions being poor that is the cause of any potential salmonella problems when eating chicken raw?

[Garrett Smith]

Healthy animals = healthy meat, and vice versa.

Salmonella is not that much of a concern in young-ish healthy people anyway.

[Scott Kustes]

Paleo man ate birds.

As G has mentioned, Salmonella is partly a result of improperly raised meat and partly a result of a poor gut environment lacking the proper good bacteria to fight off the bad.

[Chris Salvato]

salmonella is also overplayed by our society....

i ate a dozen raw eggs a day at one point and people were fearing for my life when I told them how many raw eggs I ate....they were convinced I was asking for trouble...

I now cook my eggs due to better absorption -- but a raw egg is a great way to quickly add protein from a whole food to something :P