The latest diet fad- but is raw meat healthy?

EVER since neolithic man sparked a flame, cooked meat has been on the menu. Yet the latest celebrity diet to arrive in the country has turned back time, advocating raw meat as the secret to health and weight loss.

The "raw food revolution" believes ingredients such as beef, venison and fish should not be baked or boiled.

Celebrity advocates of the new diet are said to include Hollywood actresses Uma Thurman, Demi Moore and Natalie Portman. In the United States, a new style of raw food restaurants - dubbed "eateries without ovens" - are cropping up, and while many of them focus on vegetarian meals, meat dishes such as carpaccio of beef are also found on the menu.

In Britain, the first raw food restaurant has recently opened in London, and chefs such as Gordon Ramsay have advocated raw meat. Ramsay has supported raw dishes which many people would only expect to be served up in his television programme Kitchen Nightmares.

"A lot of people are a little bit intimidated about eating raw meat and fish, which is a great shame because I think they are really missing out," he said. "It is a very healthy and natural way of doing things."

Supporters of the raw food diet believe it is naturally more healthy than consuming cooked food. They argue that uncooked food contains live enzymes which give people more energy and, as a result, they require less sleep. The enzymes, however, are killed off when boiled or cooked at a temperature above 118F.

In America, there are advocates who believe eating raw meat even has the potential to reverse heart disease and can cure diabetes.

However, while dishes such as sushi and steak tartare - raw mince - have been served as delicacies in British restaurants for decades, health and safety professionals believe the consumption of raw meat on a wider scale could be potentially fatal.

Professor Hugh Pennington, the president of the Society for General Microbiology, who investigated the Scottish E coli outbreak that killed 17 people in 1996, believes the new diet to be dangerous. "As someone who has spent a good deal of time in the last ten years trying to get across the message that by the application of common sense infections with bacteria like E coli 157 can be prevented, I cannot endorse raw meat," he said.

Fiona Hinton, the managing director of the Edinburgh Dietetic Centre, was unaware of any extra benefit to be derived from consuming raw meat.

"The principal benefits we get from meat are protein and the minerals zinc and iron, all of which you will get from cooked meat without any of the risk that could come from consuming raw meat," she said. "I know there are people who believe eating raw meat will take us back to the diet of our ancestors, but we have been cooking for a very long time; why chuck out the cooker now?"

It is an attitude that Karl Loren, who runs the US website Vibrant Life and advocates a raw meat diet, expects from the establishment. An advocate of alternative medicine and natural living, Mr Loren explains on his site that the idea of "humans eating a raw meat diet is one that takes a great deal of understanding, because it is so contrary to politically and medically correct thinking".

Mr Loren has been conducting research into diabetes, which has increased by 70 per cent in Americans aged between 30 and 39 over the past ten years, and he believes that it is a problem that can be solved by diet. "The raw meat diet for humans can handle these problems," he says on his site.

According to Mr Loren, the human body has not changed for a long period of time, but the human diet has changed radically. He has argued that "it could be that the first 'drug' on our planet was cooked food - it appeared to taste better, but it was harmful to survival".

Andrew Fairlie, the chef at Gleneagles Restaurant who will next month cook for the US president, George Bush, Tony Blair and the other G8 leaders, says he occasionally uses raw duck, lamb and beef in his Michelin-starred dishes.

"We'll sometimes use raw meats in our carpaccio dishes depending on the season. We wouldn't do it during the winter, but in the summer we'll use air-dried lamb and air-dried duck," he said. "The meat is raw and obviously the most important thing is to use only the best meats and know your supplier very well. Let's be honest, it's not recommended to eat any old scabby duck.

"I know that in the past many people were wary of eating any white meat, but today if you want to you can eat raw pork. Remember when you have a rare steak the centre of it is practically raw.

"My own taste varies: sometimes I might take a fancy to a raw scallop and other times I'd prefer to have it seared. The bottom line is, I know about food and my customers will trust me and my suppliers."