The Diane Rehm Show

"TRUE carnivores do not have to cook meat at all in any way in order to safely digest it. Their digestive systems have evolved to handle bacteria from raw meat... Humans have not."

The differences are not great. The carnivore mostly eats fresh kill. Humans can eat fresh kill too. Both deal with bacteria similarly, with highly acidic stomachs hostile to bacteria. When scavenging for food, meat that has been sitting out, chewed on by animals and insects, etc., has skyrocketing bacteria count. Humans can cook scavenged degraded meat that carnivores have walked away from as no longer appealing to make it still edible -- to a point. Neither most carnivores nor humans can eat decayed meat. That's the domain of vultures and insect larvae.

So humans do not have to cook their meat to eat it, as was stated previously and I took issue with. It just extends the usefulness of the meat.

Eskimos have a higher rate of osteoporosis due to lower levels of vitamin D in their bodies from lack of sun exposure, not from eating an animal diet. There are other non-arctic populations that subsist on mostly meat that do not have higher incidence of osteoporosis. They do get some vitamin D, but not a lot, from the raw animal diet, but it's not found in vegetable/grain foods at all.

All this aside, I think the focus of this discussion has drifted from the more interesting subject of animal sentience. Just because humans can eat meat, cooked or not, doesn't mean that they should. To quote scripture:

"12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;
13 And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine."

Even religious folks that believe in this scripture usually pretty much ignore this portion and don't practice it.