A DAD has spent the last decade eating nothing but raw meat including testicles and sheep stomach smoothies for dessert.
Derek Nance, 35, says he has never felt healthier after adopting the obscure diet as a result of childhood food allergies.
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Derek has eaten nothing but raw meat for nearly a decade
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He also lists sheep testicles as one of his favourite snacks because of the ‘salty taste’
The 35-year-old’s odd choice of nourishment includes animals’ spleen, liver and brain.
But he does have some standards and insists he would never eat the hooves or horns.
Fussy or what!
The hardcore carnivore from Lexington, Kentucky has dined on the caveman cuisine for almost 10 years and insists eating raw meat – including chicken – is totally safe.
‘HIGH MEAT’
Derek claims his diet has barely any adverse effects on his health – claiming the only time he fell ill with bad food poisoning was when he ate a week-old raw chicken.
The dad also snacks on maggots as the flesh-eating critters contain beneficial enzymes that help him digest the large amount of raw meat he eats.
And another intriguing favourite of his is ‘high-meat’ – which does exactly what it says on the tin.
‘High-meat’ is essentially rotten animal flesh which releases bacteria when eaten that give a sense of euphoria to the consumer.
Unfazed by other people’s opinion Derek told Barcroft TV: “A full-grown sheep, around 175 pounds or so, will last about a month.
“Whenever I get a fresh animal in, there’s something about the fresh blood that just stimulates appetite.
“And decomposed flesh is a part of a natural diet of almost every predator on this planet.
“There’s plenty of animals that you can see that scavenge.”
Derek maintains variety in his diet by eating every part of the sheep from head to tail and butchers them himself after his monthly collection from a nearby organic farm.
I believe the nourishment in raw animal foods is far superior than the baby foods
Derek Nance On Feeding Raw Meat To His Kids
He even feeds the ‘natural’ diet to his kids but receives mixed reviews from them.
Older son Aldous thinks it’s ‘pretty strange’ while his younger daughter Maddie thinks it’s cool.
“There are certain nutrients that are in raw flesh that get cooked out – there’s trace amounts of vitamin C, the vitamin A and the B vitamins.”
‘ENTIRELY IRRESPONSIBLE’
However, Sun nutritionist and columnist Amanda Ursell couldn’t disagree more.
Upon hearing of Mr Nance’s decision to feed it to his kids she said: “It is 100 per cent, absolutely and entirely irresponsible to feed children and teenagers in this way.
“If only for the fact they would almost surely end up with rickets and stunted growth from insufficient calcium.
“It is unbalanced and could leave them with multiple nutrient deficiencies affecting their growth, development and psychological and emotional well being.”
Another person who struggles to buy into his protein rich meals is his ex-vegetarian partner Joann Prosser, 60.
While she acknowledges the potential environmental benefits of Derek’s choice, Joann says she’ll never be fully converted.
Whenever he gets the brain out, sometimes I’ll say, ‘Please crack that head open outside’
Joann Prosser On Her Partner’s Home Butchery
She said: “I can never get past the smell.
“I think that the way Derek harvests meat is much more ethical than buying it from a grocery store.
“But whenever he gets the brain out, sometimes I’ll say, ‘Please crack that head open outside’.
“I never imagined I would be saying that to anybody.”
Growing up with numerous food allergies and intolerance, Derek was forced to find an alternative, eventually settling on the extreme diet some people think is simply ‘offal’.
He said he had most trouble with foods containing wheat, dairy and anything carbohydrate which would give him headaches so he had to make a change.
Derek said: “I was experimenting with so many different diets and nothing seemed to work.”
After years of trying different things he came across the Weston A. Price Foundation’s studies on the diets of the Inuit and Native Americans.
He said: “I was having so much trouble digesting everything else that meat seemed to work well for me.”
It all started when Derek decided to butcher two pygmy goats he was keeping for dairy.
He said: “It got to the point in winter time where I couldn’t afford to buy hay for them and they were just really loud and annoying, and you could only get a couple of pints of milk out of them.”
Initially experimenting by eating around two pounds of goat per day, Derek was surprised at how much better he felt.
He now hopes to follow the raw meat diet for the rest of his life.
He said: “I’ve invested 10 years in it and now I’m really curious to see how far I can push it.
“If I could live to be 80 years old, then it would validate a lot of the theories I have about this diet.”
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Derek had a ‘normal American diet as a kid’
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Raw meat eating Derek hopes to continue his diet for the rest of his life
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Raw meat smoothies are a particular favourite for the man from Kentucky
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He whips up his very own raw meat smoothies to have ‘on-the-go’