Yes, the toxins in cooked-foods do usually prevent weight-loss, particularly in my own case.

The reason why Charles has a bigger following than Lex is obvious:- not only is he suggesting that it doesn't matter whether you cook your meats( citing Stefansson's experiment despite the fact that Stefansson  ate some raw animal food(eg:- raw marrow) during his short-lived 12-month-long Bellevue experiment), but also he recommends cheaper, grainfed meats rather than the slightly more expensive grassfed meats. People will always follow the path of least resistance and when a diet offers an easy way out, even if it doesn't work long-term, it's still an attractive option for many people.

Last I checked, Charles doesn't do dairy, right?

*NB:- I don't suggest that grassfed meat is expensive as that's a bit of a myth. It isn't really as , due to its higher nutrient-levels, one can live perfectly well on smaller amounts of grassfed meats than is the case with grainfed meats. When one further compares a raw-animal-food diet consisting of grassfed meat with a conventional junk-food diet based on the "balanced diet", then one can see just how much cheaper a raw-animal-food diet is as most RAFers aren't going in for chocolate/alcohol/smoking binges, let alone binging on crisps("chips" to Americans) and other junk-food. Yet, some RAFers keep on complaining about how expensive a RAF diet is.

The idea that grassfed meat is always expensive is nonsense. I've managed to get hold of very cheap grassfed horsemeat in Italy, for example, which is FAR cheaper than the grainfed beef on offer, over there. Same here in the UK, I can get whole wild-hare carcasses, complete with organ-meats, inside(albeit headless), for 10-11 pounds each(13 pounds if I don't order them regularly, which is rare), a massive grassfed leg of mutton for 14-16 pounds sterling etc. Plus, as grainfed meat is inferior nutritionally, one has to eat more of it to get most of the right nutrients, though one would miss out on omega-3s, mostly.

What irks me, though, is that cooked-zero-carbers are following such highly artificial diets, yet frequently cite the Eskimos/Inuit as supposed proof that their diet  works, in the long-term. In fact, the Inuits followed a diet that was radically different from most cooked-zero-carbers - for one thing, they ate large amounts of organ-meats, ate much of their meats raw, and ate meats from wild-animals with much, much  higher levels of omega-3s than would be found in supermarket, grainfed meats.

I disagree that not eating cooked-starch for years makes it indigestible. For one thing, unlike Lex and co, I'm not following a zero-carb diet but a low-carb one, so carbs, cooked or not, don't have the same effect on me as they do to Lex.

As regards the Christmas Pudding, if I eat a standard Christmas Pudding I always suffer greatly because of the heated vegetable-oils in it - in the last few years, though, I've eaten only organic Christmas Puddings which don't have vegetable-oils so I'm less affected by them.

If I had children, I would undoubtedly feed them on raw animal foods. After all, despite your claims, raw animal foods can be quite soft(eg:- raw liver, raw fish/shellfish etc.), and even muscle-meats like raw leg of mutton are quite soft - though I would always cut up the meats beforehand for children to eat better. Of course, in Palaeo times, children were breastfed for much longer periods(c.1 year) until their teeth were fully developed and able to handle raw meats.

Nicola, it just occurred to me that this topic should have been put in the Hot Topics forum, in the first place, as that's really the forum for discussing any alleged benefits of cooked-zero-carb/raw vegan/cooked-junk-food etc. diets.

*Forgot to add 1 other point:- I'm always deeply suspicious of anybody who claims 100% success on any diet, without any issues whatsoever. If they don't mention at least some setback  on their path to health, no matter how slight, or worse, as in the case of some others(not Charles) start making outrageous claims, such as the notion of being able to live forever on such-and-such-a-diet or become as strong as  Arnie without the need for any exercise whatsoever etc., then there's good reason to be think that a great deal of exaggeration is involved.

The trouble is that Charles claims that the Eskimos ate hardly any raw animal food and bases this on a very biased comment by Stefansson in his books. But, in fact, all other non-Stefansson sources, such as Weston-Price, make it very clear that raw animal food was a major staple of the Inuit diet(and of many other Arctic tribes such as the Nenets of Siberia).

It's interesting that zero-carbers commonly have a tendency to steer towards cooking meats less and less - Charles seems to be no exception.