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DEREK Nance is a butcher.<\/p>\n
Before that he was an electrician. But it’s been a natural transition – given he eats a diet of exclusively raw meat, VICEreports.<\/p>\n
He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and fell into the raw meat thing about five years ago when he was in desperate search of a cure-all diet for his ailing digestion.<\/p>\n
Having tried just about everything else, Mr Nance turned to a raw meat diet concept conceived in the 1930s. He started off by slaughtering two goats he’d been keeping for milk. He ate the pair, and never looked back.<\/p>\n
Mr Nance didn’t go straight for raw meat; he’d extracted wheat and dairy from his diet, tried the Mediterranean diet, then a vegan. Then he spun 180 degrees.<\/p>\n
“I’d been sick for such a long time that I was willing to give anything a try,” he told VICE.<\/p>\n
“Half of the problem with my digestion was actually just lack of enzymes. My body just doesn’t produce enough enzymes to digest starchy foods.”<\/p>\n
To counter this digestion issue, Mr Nance’s diet partly consists of rotten meat – which he saw contains “probiotic bacteria”.<\/p>\n
There are other wrinkles to this diet, according to Mr Nance, including:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Organ meat and connective tissue: They contain vitamin C – so he keeps jars of the stuff to stave off scurvy;<\/p>\n
\u2022 Lamb is his favourite, then beef, but pigs are a “no no, because they shoot them full of hormones”;<\/p>\n
\u2022 His friends are cool with him bringing his own food over for dinner;<\/p>\n
\u2022 He now craves the taste of raw meat: “About three weeks in I noticed this real strong blood-like taste in the back of my throat… the idea of cooked meat no longer appeals. It just tastes burned.” <\/p>\n
Oh, and here’s the best part: his girlfriend is a vegetarian. And she’s fully supportive of his diet.<\/p>\n
Sadly, though, not everyone’s a fan of Derek’s raw lifestyle change.<\/p>\n
“My family thinks I’ve lost it. They literally think I’m off-the-deep-end insane and I don’t know why. Eating raw meat is just something they can’t accept. My father has a master’s in biology and tells me that if I eat raw meat, I’ll get some sort of pathogen.”<\/p>\n
He says he regrets feeling like an “outcast”, but now that he’s healthier and happier than ever he’d never consider going back.<\/p>\n
And now that he’s in the butchering trade, he gets plenty of take-home freebies.<\/p>\n