Raw foods, whether from plants or animals, are the most health-giving. Cooking destroys nutrients and generates toxins.

Aajonus Vonderplanitz created the most advanced diet based on raw foods — it is neither "raw vegan" nor "raw carnivore" — the Primal Diet.

Certain foods are more bio-available when cooked, but they are the exception, and still contain toxins generated by cooking.

Even if you do not eat 100% raw, you will benefit from adding any amount of raw food to your diet.

Fat serves 3 functions: fuel (provides energy), building block (builds tissue — cells, hormones, etc.), and solvent (cleanses the body of toxins and waste).

Fat, not sugar, is our main source of energy. The liver and gallbladder are designed to digest large amounts of fat.

• Raw animal fats include: raw egg, raw butter, raw cream, raw fat trimmings/suet, raw bone marrow, etc.
• A baseline of 200g of raw fat foods per day is good. More is even better.

We have been exposed to considerable contamination accumulated in our tissues. Fat is the main thing to dissolve, surround, bind to, and enable the expelling of those toxins. A single molecule of mercury could require 50 to 200 fat cells to eliminate from the body.

Since most of the raw fat we eat goes to handle toxins, we need much more of it daily. Eating too little raw fat, most of it would go to toxins, leaving us with little to no energy.

Aajonus' #1 recommendation is to eat as much raw animal fat as possible — even beyond appetite levels. This is key to healing and reaching peak states of well-being and performance.

Raw meat is the only food that will regenerate your tissues and provide growth. Raw animal protein of any sort enables you to maintain, get energy, and repair to a certain extent, but only raw meat will truly provide growth.

Aajonus found that the proteins in raw eggs are very good to repair, but not "mature" enough to generate new tissues and provide growth overall.

Raw milk, if never chilled, also provides growth, however it is still only 1/10th of what raw meat can provide.

On average, aim roughly for a pound a day of raw meat. Eating more is even better, and there are ways to multiply the benefits covered in other rules.

Only celery juice can protect your body from certain toxins that will otherwise continuously damage you: it is the irreplaceable main remedy. This is the main thing that separates the Primal Diet from so-called "raw carnivore" diets.

Aajonus observed that carnivores occasionally chew on some leaves — not by coincidence, but as a remedy. There are compounds only found in plant juice that help the body remove certain toxins. Carnivores only need a few drops, but since we have accumulated much more toxicity, our required amount is significantly higher.

Aajonus recommends an average of 4 cups a day (2 cups bare minimum). The required amount can vary importantly per individual.

Celery MUST be organic — celery can be one of the most sprayed vegetables, and non-organic celery juice could cause more damage than it helps.

The only known replacements for celery juice are sugar cane juice and unripe (green, hard) papaya juice, if you cannot find celery.

Without celery juice, many toxins will remain in the body and continuously damage it. It is irreplaceable.

Too much sugar/carbohydrates, even if raw, is toxic. It poses two issues: glycemic imbalance leading to energy crashes, and accumulation of AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-Products), that cause 1/3 of diseases.

The body only has around 4g of sugar circulating in the blood at a time. Eating more than a few carbohydrates drops blood-fat level and raises blood-sugar, making the pancreas overwork to secrete insulin. This creates a sugar spike followed by an energy crash — leaving us mentally and emotionally fatigued, irritable, sleepy, or depressed.

AGEs are a corrosive glycotoxin. Columbia University found they store in a healthy body at 70%, and in an unhealthy body at 90%. AGE accumulates and eventually melts tissues, creating sagging skin and muscles, and predisposes to cancer and many other diseases.

Some foods that contain sugar can be beneficial for the other nutrients they contain — other rules address how to manage sugar intake properly.

After modern civilization brought native people processed and cooked breads, sugar and alcohol, natives developed all of the diseases that "civilized" mankind suffers.

Salt is a rock, and our body cannot process rocks. It has a toxic effect, very different from the sodium found as a nutrient in plant or animal foods.

Water dissolves rocks, plants eat rocks, animals eat plants, and we eat the plants or animals. This is how minerals become bio-available — rock salt bypasses this chain entirely.

During digestion, the sodium is separated from the chloride, becoming isolated. Isolated sodium is more volatile than nitroglycerin. It creates micro-explosions in the blood, destroying other nutrients and killing cells. When isolated sodium doesn't explode right away, sodium ions can cluster together, and their magnetism rips off the guts of cells.

When part of raw foods, sodium is always bound to other nutrients and doesn't get isolated. You get enough sodium from raw milk, raw celery juice, raw tomatoes, and raw oysters.

One million red blood cells are destroyed by one little grain of salt. This makes rock salt the second worst thing next to cooking in standard diet practices.

Raw meat and raw vegetable juice require opposite digestive environments — respectively acidic and alkaline — and would cancel each other's digestion if consumed too close together.

Our body is by default in an acidic state. "You've got 2300 varieties of bacteria in the mouth and they're all acid." — Aajonus. When we drink raw vegetable juice, it alkalizes the digestive environment, and it takes time to revert back to acidic.

Morning exception: the body is much more acidic from overnight detoxification, so if having celery juice before raw meat in the morning, only 45 minutes are needed instead of a full hour. That applies only once in the morning.

Raw milk and raw eggs are usually not concerned by this rule — they can sometimes be eaten at the same time as celery juice, because they are less acidic than meat.

Raw meat and raw vegetable juice are never compatible — always space them by at least 1 hour.

Aajonus recommends eating raw animal protein (and accompanying raw fat) at least every 5h — raw eggs, raw meat, raw milk, or a combination (e.g. raw milkshake). That is to prevent being in a state of autophagy.

After as little as 5h (or even 2–4h depending on the person), all proteins in the blood are gone. This is caused by our toxicity, and what Aajonus called mutant antibodies — created in reaction to vaccines — that break down healthy protein, wasting it.

When the body runs out of protein, it cannibalizes its own red blood cells, which both weakens the body and exposes it to more damage from stored toxicity.

Aajonus recommends waking up at night to eat raw animal protein within less than 5 hours since the last meal — even with an alarm clock. This may seem forced, but it gives much better quality sleep, as the body gets plenty of nutrients to heal, grow, and detoxify with fewer side-effects. It is the best way to solve morning fatigue.

The body gets used to waking at night and eventually does so on its own. It is better not to wait until too tired to sleep, otherwise waking up to eat could be harder.

Raw milk is one of the main foods that provides extra minerals. Minerals are extremely important: they are building blocks for the body, they are essential in detoxification (binding to toxins), and they help in body function.

Minerals from plant foods (like celery juice) bind to toxins and assist function (2 out of 3). Minerals from animal foods like milk or oysters can also rebuild the body — they do all 3 things. For example, healing osteoporosis with only raw meat and celery juice would be slow, but with raw milk, that process is much faster.

Raw milk is a liquid food, so it digests faster than solid foods like raw meat. It has animal proteins and fats so it is rather complete — but it cannot replace raw meat (rule #3).

Drink 0.5 to 2 liters daily on average. Full-fat raw milk is much preferred.

Important: Do not drink cold raw milk if it's fresh — it should be at room temperature. If it's already fermented, then it can be had cold since bacteria have pre-digested it.

A raw egg is the fastest digesting complete food and an instant source of energy. It has animal protein, fat, and plenty of micronutrients.

A raw egg eaten on its own digests in only 37 minutes, and in only 27 minutes if the egg white is drank first. This makes it a perfect food to get energy quickly — you do not need fast-digesting sugar for "instant" energy.

• You can pour the egg in a glass, or drink it directly from the shell (poke holes with your teeth on the lower side first, cover with your finger, then on the upper side).
• Raw eggs can be combined with almost any other food: raw meat, celery juice, etc.
• Do not eat the egg yolk only — Aajonus said it creates imbalances: you need the whole raw egg.

The avidin/biotin myth has been debunked. Aajonus ate up to 60 whole raw eggs a day with no biotin deficiencies. Avidin and biotin actually create a compound that helps detoxify leftover carbon by-products from digestion.

Eat them without moderation, even dozens per day — it's healthy.

Eating raw meat can repair similar specific tissues in the body. Eating raw foods detoxifies the toxic by-products of cooked foods that were eaten in the past.

For example, in case of liver damage, eating raw liver can speed up healing. For anyone that ate cooked dairy in the past, eating raw dairy will help pull out those stored toxins. Eating muscle meat will heal muscles faster even if the cut isn't exactly the equivalent of the muscle that needs repair.

Each food has specific bacteria, and when an organism dies, its own bacteria consumes it, which helps recycle it. The same happens in the body: debris from cooked foods will be removed efficiently by a similar or identical raw food.

Raw nutrients bind to their toxic counterparts: raw iron binds to toxic iron, raw calcium removes cauterized calcium from pasteurized dairy, etc.

This is a general rule with important exceptions: sometimes the best remedy isn't just "the same thing but raw." For liver damage, Aajonus would recommend first and foremost raw animal fat, with raw liver as a supplement. For cooked sugar toxicity, he'd mainly recommend raw celery juice and unheated honey.

Drinking raw celery juice can detoxify past cooked greens, including cooked plants other than celery.

Freezing foods, even if raw, destroys most of their nutritional value for most of them, and for some even generates toxins.

In Aajonus' experiments, dogs fed frozen raw butter developed diseases such as mange, while those fed never-frozen raw butter remained healthy. Then, the sick group placed on never-frozen raw butter healed. Aajonus concluded some foods could lose around 80% of their nutritional value from being frozen.

For certain foods, such as meat, freezing can also generate toxins from the proteins, in addition to destroying nutrients.

• Exceptions: fruits (can be eaten frozen without issue), fish that would survive freezing and thawing (such as Arctic Cod), and raw ice cream for up to 24h (flash freeze recommended).
• If making high meat, Aajonus also discourages using frozen meat: the bacteria are changed from freezing and induce more radical detoxifications.

Aajonus preferred average quality fresh meat over frozen high quality meat.

According to Aajonus, 90% of detoxification occurs through the skin. The body sends 90% of toxins to be eliminated through the skin, but they are only deposited under the skin — it is still required to sweat for them to come out.

Take 45-minute-long hot baths, use hot water bottles at night, or do physical activity. Leaving those toxins under the skin can create substantial discomfort and damage over time.

"I recommend everybody get into a hot bath for 40 minutes. It's important because toxins will stay under your skin and if they build up year after year, it causes deterioration of connective tissue, destruction of skin, and can lead to lupus, MS, destruction of your nerves — all of your tissues internally. You've got to perspire those poisons out of your body." — Aajonus

• Saunas must be avoided — temperatures are too hot and damage the skin and mucous membranes. Max temperature should not exceed 43.3°C (110°F).
• For treated/municipal bath water, add: 2–3 cups raw milk, 3 tbsp raw vinegar, 2 tbsp salt (Epsom or sea salt).
• If using hot water bottles, use rubber ones, and put them in the sun for an entire day before first use.

Not only does sweating prevent severe long-term damage, it immediately removes lethargy, irritability, improves appetite, sleep, healing, and body function overall.

Aajonus discovered that raw unsalted cheese doesn't digest, but instead absorbs toxins very efficiently. For almost everyone, many toxins store in the gut — the stomach is very resilient and contains digestive acids, so the body deposits toxins there for neutralization.

However, most foods get damaged and contaminated by those gut toxins, and many toxins end up recycled back into the body. When eating raw unsalted cheese, the cheese draws the toxins to itself and neutralizes them with its concentrated minerals and fats.

Eat a piece of cheese (about half a teaspoon to a teaspoon) 10 minutes before you eat any other food — whether solid or liquid, even water. The cheese will collect the toxins, clearing the way for your next food.

Wait at least 10 minutes after the cheese. No more toxins will be dumped for up to 30 minutes, so you get improved digestion — around twice better. The total duration of this toxin-dumping cycle that is reset by the cheese is 40 minutes.

If you eat before the 10 minutes have passed, the body will deposit more toxins in the gut, but it will still be less than eating no cheese at all before.

When eating sugar (raw fruit, unheated honey, raw carrot juice, or even cooked starch), Aajonus recommends eating about an equal amount of raw fat. This slows down sugar digestion and trickle-releases it into the bloodstream, preventing bigger crashes.

If the amount of sugar is very little — for example, a raw lemonade with a little lemon juice and honey, or a single small blueberry — adding fat might not be necessary.

Anything more than this (several strawberries, half an orange, etc.), Aajonus strongly recommends adding raw fat: butter, cream, cheese, egg, or plant fats like avocado.

For a whole high-carb fruit, the amount of fat required should be at least two raw eggs.

The raw fat should be eaten before or with the sugar-containing food, not after — otherwise it might not slow down sugar digestion and prevent spikes.

Fermenting raw foods raises their bio-availability, as the bacteria or molds pre-digest them. Our digestive process is 90% a bacterial process, so the body relies in great part on bacteria to break down food into nutrients.

For example, fresh raw milk can take 10h to digest, while fermented raw milk takes 6h — almost half. You also benefit from the multiplied bacteria themselves, which assist in detoxifying the body.

There are many stages of fermentation with different bacteria taking over as time passes, so it's good to eat foods at different stages to benefit from the wide range of those bacteria.

Fermented and moldy plant foods should be limited — they bring out much more detoxification, which can be too fast and use all available resources. Fermented animal foods are much more balanced: they trigger additional detoxification but also feed the body, which balances it.

Fermenting foods also brings out more taste — it breaks down foods similar to cooking, but without the destruction of nutrients or generation of toxins.

Almost all raw milk can be had fermented. High meat can be had often. But limit fermented plant foods to avoid overly harsh detoxification.

Honey, if truly unheated, contains 90% enzymes and only 10% sugar, making it a great digestive aid and one of the best sources of sugar — for the same amount, the sugar will be less harmful.

When bees process flower nectar, they transform 90% of the sugar into enzymes. Enzymes break down food and significantly improve digestion. Additionally, bees add compounds that lower sugar spikes and even AGE generation.

Honey is a fragile food. Between 33°C and 39°C (92°F and 102°F), the enzymes progressively revert back into sugar. Beware of raw labels — ask beekeepers about maximum temperatures during every step of processing.

The body is deficient in enzymes from years of eating cooked foods, because the body had to leach enzymes from its own cells to digest those cooked foods. Unheated honey fixes this — strong cravings for it are normal as the body catches up with deficiencies.

Honey can be eaten in small amounts on its own or in bigger amounts with other foods. It is not recommended to binge on honey for too long because it can create protein deficiencies.

The raw milkshake is a recipe and one of the most important items on the Primal Diet. It reinforces the body, in particular the mucous linings, which are essential to protect bodily tissues from toxin damage.

Mucus protects the mucous membranes in the intestines, kidneys, etc. Contrary to certain beliefs, mucus is not toxic — it is part of the body. When mucus is expelled during detoxification, it acts as a vessel containing toxins, but is not a toxin itself.

Toxins can deplete the mucus lining, exposing tissues and organs to damage — manifesting as heartburn, being constantly drained, and other symptoms.

Eating raw meat, raw fat, etc., should in theory give everything the body needs, but for most people, because of toxicity and long-term deficiencies, it often takes the specific combination of foods in raw milkshakes to generate appropriate amounts of mucus.

Recipe: a whole raw egg, raw milk, and extra raw cream (extra fat is necessary), with a bit of unheated honey to facilitate digestion. Blend together.

The milkshake strengthens parts of the body that other foods cannot, most of the time — it is the best combination of foods to help the body restore mucus.

According to Aajonus, the body makes its glycogen for the whole day in the first 6 hours from waking. Glycogen fuels the brain and nervous system — despite being sugar, the best way to produce it is from protein, not from eating sugar.

The body converts some protein to pyruvate to make good quality glycogen. However, if eating too much sugar in the first 6 hours, the body will continue to make glycogen all day long, generating more toxic byproducts and causing stickiness in the neurological system, blood serum, and lymphatic system.

Eat raw meat or raw eggs in the morning to generate the glycogen required by the body.

• Avoid sugary foods until 6 hours after waking: honey, milk, milkshakes, fruits, etc.
• Having a little bit of sugar in the vegetable juice is accepted.

Protein is the best material for the body to make glycogen from — making glycogen from sugar generates toxicity throughout the day and affects body function negatively.