Swordfish is Aajonus Vonderplanitz's single favorite food. He states this repeatedly and explicitly across multiple seminar recordings, written newsletters, and Q&A documents. He describes swordfish as the highest-mercury fish in the sea, and yet simultaneously as a food he eats in tremendous quantities, a fact he uses as the central proof-of-concept for his entire position on raw food and mercury toxicity. Swordfish is not merely a food preference for Aajonus; it is the organism around which he designed and executed one of his most important laboratory experiments, an experiment he returned to repeatedly across decades of teaching as the foundational evidence that mercury in raw fish is not harmful to human beings.

Aajonus places swordfish within the category of ocean wild-caught fish, the only category of fish he recommends without reservation. He explicitly includes swordfish stating: "I recommend only ocean wild-caught raw fish, not farmed, except oysters, clams and scallops. I suggest all varieties including Swordfish, which has the highest mercury content." He describes swordfish as being particularly valuable for people who need minerals, who have mineral toxicity in their kidneys and liver, or who have nervous system damage requiring nerve reconstitution.

Within the broader architecture of the Primal Diet, white meat, including ocean wild-caught fish like swordfish, is described as reconstituting nerves, including the brain. Aajonus states clearly that swordfish, despite or even because of its high mercury content, is among the most therapeutically valuable foods a person on the Primal Diet can eat, provided it is eaten raw, fresh, and never frozen.

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Aajonus's foundational argument about swordfish is that the mercury found in this species is not toxic mercury but organic, biologically integrated mercury, an element that is functional and purposeful within the body of the swordfish itself. He states:

"The mercury in swordfish is a natural element in that species that helps its mobility. Eating raw swordfish will educate a body on how to utilize mercury efficiently."

More specifically, he explains that swordfish mercury is directly responsible for the animal's buoyancy and its ability to leap, dive, and move with exceptional speed and agility. He states: "The mercury, the high mercury in flying fish and swordfish is very important for their buoyancy. Without that mercury, they could never reach the heights that they do. The flying fish would never be able to fly without that mercury. It helps it stay lofty, especially in fluids, so it can rise up and then fly or jump or leap very far."

He also notes: "Some whales that leap very high are high in mercury too, not because of the pollution", indicating that high mercury is a biologically selected trait in certain high-movement ocean species, not merely an accumulation of environmental contamination.

He extends this logic to the consumer: "Eating raw swordfish will educate a body on how to utilize mercury efficiently." This implies that the mercury in raw swordfish, because it is bound within intact fat molecules, teaches the body's own biological intelligence how to handle, transport, and eventually chelate and eliminate mercury, including toxic mercury from other sources such as vaccines and industrial exposure.

Aajonus distinguishes between three distinct forms of mercury, and this distinction is the entire basis of his argument that swordfish is safe to eat raw:

1. Organic mercury, the kind found in raw fish, particularly in swordfish. This is mercury that has been processed by plankton and incorporated into the food chain. He describes it as healthy and functional.

2. Stable mercury, the kind found in rock and in nature in an inert form. Not immediately harmful.

3. Toxic mercury (free radical mercury), the kind created when organic mercury is heated through cooking. When the fat molecules surrounding the mercury are fractured by heat, the mercury is released from its biological matrix and becomes a free radical, capable of causing neurological and systemic damage.

He states: "There's three kinds of mercury. There's organic mercury. There is stable mercury that you find like in rock and in nature. And then there's toxic mercury. In food, like when the swordfish goes around eating the plankton and gets its mercury, it's a healthy organic mercury. And it helps it be able to fly and jump and be more buoyant. So it's useful. But once you cook it, as soon as you cook it, it becomes the lethal kind of mercury."

He also states,: "When digested and made bioactive by plankton and eaten by fish, traces of mercury are great detoxifiers of toxic mercury in the body. Bioactive and non-cauterized mercury in raw fish helps buoyancy of fish. When fish are cooked, mercury and other metallic minerals become free-radicals and toxic."

The reason raw swordfish passes mercury through the body without harm, according to Aajonus, is that the mercury in raw fish is bound within intact fat molecules. These fat molecules, when ingested raw, remain relatively undigested and unaltered, they pass through the digestive system with the mercury still bound inside them. The stomach's hydrochloric acid does not dissolve these fat-bound mercury molecules when they are in their raw state.

He explains this in detailed physiological terms: "The fat molecules that were bound with that mercury that were in the swordfish relatively unetched with digestive juices. So in the raw state, the body, the digestive tract, could identify this animal fat bound with this toxin. Do not let it free. Do not set it free."

When examined under an electronic microscope, the feces and urine from the animals that ate raw swordfish showed "massive amounts of cholesterols attached and encapsulated mercury molecules", demonstrating the physical mechanism by which mercury passes safely through the body when the food is consumed raw.

Conversely, when the swordfish is cooked, those same fat molecules are destroyed, fractured, denatured, altered by heat. The mercury is then released from its fat matrix. Without fat to bind it, the mercury is free to be absorbed into the blood, tissues, and bones. He states: "When you cook it, it fractionates and the body has no real choice because it's already dissolved. It's already fractionated. The body just has to deal with catch and release, catch and release."

Beyond merely passing through harmlessly, Aajonus argues that bioactive mercury from raw swordfish actually assists the body in detoxifying its own accumulated toxic mercury stores. He states: "When digested and made bioactive by plankton and eaten by fish, traces of mercury are great detoxifiers of toxic mercury in the body."

This is consistent with his broader framework in which raw minerals, even those considered toxic in their altered forms, can assist the body in processing and eliminating stored toxic mineral accumulations, particularly those deposited in bones, which he states take 7.5 years to replace every cell, and potentially 40 years to fully cleanse of metal poisoning.

Aajonus describes fish in general as particularly reconstituting for the nervous system, and this extends to swordfish specifically. "White meat such as nonfarmed, ocean wild-caught fish and seafood, helps reconstitute nerves, including the brain." He also notes that fish stimulates fat burning and that people who eat only fish tend to lose weight, because the nervous system rapidly absorbs the mineral-rich fats. This is why he recommends pairing fish with butter or avocado, to slow the uptake and provide a fat buffer that stabilizes the rate at which the nervous system draws minerals from the fish.

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Aajonus is absolutely unambiguous on this point: swordfish must be eaten raw. Any application of heat, no matter the method, transforms the mercury in swordfish from an organic, fat-bound compound into a free radical toxin. There is no safe level of cooking. He states: "Once you cook it, as soon as you cook it, it becomes the lethal kind of mercury."

In his laboratory experiment, the animals that ate cooked swordfish retained 88–92% of the mercury in their bodies. Animals and humans who ate raw swordfish excreted 92–98% of that same mercury through feces and urine.

Aajonus explicitly states that frozen swordfish is not acceptable and should not be eaten. When asked directly by a workshop participant whether they should consume frozen swordfish since fresh was unavailable, he stated simply: "No. No, because swordfish is very high in mercury. It's my favorite. But once you freeze it or cook it, it turns the mercury into a poison."

This is a critical distinction. Freezing, in his framework, is treated as equivalent to cooking in terms of what it does to the fat-mercury bond. The fat molecules that protect the consumer by encapsulating mercury are disrupted by the freezing process, and the mercury is then released in a free radical form when the fish is subsequently consumed. He does not qualify this statement, he does not say "only somewhat harmful" or "less harmful than cooking." He says no, definitively.

In a striking detail from his experimental accounts, Aajonus notes that during his animal feeding experiment, the swordfish was allowed to become "very ripe" over the course of the experiment, and that both the raw animal group and himself continued to eat it. He states: "We let it go a little ripe over many weeks period. It got very ripe but they still ate it. And I ate it too. I ate the raw. I didn't eat the cooked." This demonstrates that ripened or aged raw swordfish, while not his preference, is still acceptable within the raw food framework, because the fat molecules, even in aged form, remain relatively intact and continue to chelate mercury.

While aged raw is tolerated, fresh raw swordfish is clearly preferred. Aajonus describes eating fresh-caught swordfish on islands in the Philippines and elsewhere with tremendous enthusiasm: "I would get fresh caught swordfish and tuna that day. Never frozen, never on a boat except for maybe four or five hours, six hours maximum. Big swordfish and salmon, teeny tuna this big. Unbelievable how delicious it is. Delicious it is. That fresh. I'd sit down and eat three pounds in the sitting. Like candy was to me as a kid."

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Aajonus recommends only ocean wild-caught swordfish. He does not discuss farmed swordfish as a viable option, in his framework, farmed fish are categorically different animals, fed artificial diets and raised in contaminated conditions. His recommendation for fish applies specifically to wild ocean fish: "I recommend only ocean wild-caught raw fish, not farmed."

He specifically notes that the ocean is significantly less polluted than land and fresh water: "The oceans are only 1% polluted, and that is usually within 1/2 mile from shore. Land is over 20% polluted." In another passage he puts the ocean at approximately 2–4% polluted, versus fresh water at 30–35% polluted. He uses this comparison to reinforce that even a high-mercury ocean fish like swordfish is a safer food source than most land-based or freshwater alternatives.

He prefers fish from the Pacific Coast or East Coast of the United States, particularly from areas above San Francisco and above the Carolinas respectively. He states he does not eat anything from the Gulf of Mexico due to military radioactive waste dumping and petroleum contamination from freight ships passing through the Panama Canal.

In the newsletter account of his 1989 experiment, Aajonus describes the sourcing process in detail: "I called several fishing boat businesses in Los Angeles and Ventura. After several days, I found 4 fishermen who promised to call me as soon as they, or one of their clients who was willing to sell his or her catch, caught a large-enough swordfish. After 5 days, I bought a 53 pound swordfish for the experiment."

In another account of a later iteration of a similar experiment, he describes waiting "almost eight weeks, nine weeks before I got a call from a fisherman in the Santa Barbara area who caught a big swordfish. He got 130 pounds." He notes that in the Philippines he had previously obtained a swordfish of 230 pounds, and that he paid the fisherman twice what the fisherman usually received.

This level of sourcing detail reflects how seriously Aajonus took the question of freshness and provenance, the fish had never been frozen, came directly from local fishermen, and was weighed and analyzed for mercury content immediately upon arrival.

Aajonus does not provide extensive step-by-step cleaning instructions specific to swordfish beyond what he describes for fish in general. He does note, in the context of fish odor, that the trick for cleaning raw fish without creating persistent odor is to use cool water, not warm water: "The trick with raw fish to get rid of the odor is you use cool water. Don't use warm water. And it just breaks down the fat molecules and you just go away."

He also describes preparing swordfish as a pate: "I made a sauce with butter, ginger, and honey. Very tasty sauce with my swordfish. So I made a pate of that whole mixture." He describes using a food processor for this: cutting fish into slices and then processing it, noting that a food processor does not apply pressure in the same way a meat grinder does, making it acceptable for liquefying or pating fish without damaging the food.

In one of the most vivid anecdotes Aajonus shares about his own swordfish consumption, he describes a period when Greenpeace was conducting a population study on human mercury levels by requesting hair samples. Aajonus, who describes himself as a heavy swordfish eater, sent in eight hair samples from different parts of his body under different names. He states: "I sent them 8 hair samples under different names. So, Ralph was the right side of my...", and the passage is cut off, but the implication is clear. Despite eating enormous quantities of swordfish, which he describes as the highest-mercury fish available, his mercury levels across eight different hair samples from different parts of his body remained below the threshold of concern. He states elsewhere that his hair testing showed a maximum of 4.28, well below the 11-point threshold at which mercury is considered toxic, and far below the 14-point level at which it is considered very toxic.

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Aajonus states clearly that fish should not be eaten alone without fat. He explains the biochemical reason: fish is extraordinarily high in minerals, particularly the kind of minerals that the nervous system immediately attempts to absorb. When fish is eaten without a fat buffer, the nervous system absorbs these minerals so rapidly that it can create an imbalance. He states: "Fish has a tendency to, because of the high mineral content, stimulate fat burning. People will have a tendency to lose weight if they just eat fish. They get hungry fairly quickly, because the nervous system seems to just suck it up. So if you eat a little butter with it, it will be a little calmer, the way it goes into the system."

He offers two primary fat pairings for fish:

1. Butter, he describes making a sauce with butter, ginger, and honey to accompany swordfish. He also describes a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing.

2. Avocado, "Or eat avocado with it. Avocado and fish are a wonderful combination."

He also notes: "If you are eating fish, there is lots of fat in fish, so you don't necessarily have to" add additional fat, but he then immediately qualifies this by saying "but why not," and proceeds to explain that extra fat helps calm the rate of mineral uptake by the nervous system.

In the formal Swordfish Sashimi recipe, Aajonus pairs swordfish specifically with fresh lemon or lime juice (4 tablespoons), stone-pressed olive oil (2 ounces), and a fresh hot pepper. He also includes herbs or lettuce as accompaniments. The acid from the citrus performs a partial surface-level alteration to the protein structure of the fish (similar to ceviche), but Aajonus's recipe is not designed to "cook" the fish, it is designed to enhance flavor and assist digestion.

In the experiment description, Aajonus notes that both groups of animals (raw and cooked swordfish) also received some dairy: "There was some dairy eaten by both groups." This is consistent with his broader recommendation that fat from dairy sources, particularly cream, butter, and whole raw milk, should accompany mineral-rich fish to prevent over-rapid mineral absorption.

He also states, regarding eating fish high in mercury: "I don't have a problem with my meat meal, or some other kind of fat, to make sure that I don't absorb any toxic mercury." This implies that fat accompanying the meal provides additional insurance against any mercury that might escape the fat-bound chelation system within the fish itself.

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Aajonus describes eating swordfish in very large quantities: "I eat a ton of swordfish," and "I mostly eat swordfish." When he was living on islands in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, he describes sitting down and eating three pounds of fresh-caught swordfish in a single sitting: "I'd sit down and eat three pounds in the sitting. Like candy was to me as a kid."

He also states that while living on Jekyll Island, he "consumed up to 7 pounds of raw seafood a week, including shrimp", this total seafood figure provides context for his overall fish intake.

Within the standard Primal Diet framework, fish is allocated at approximately 10–15% of total meat intake, or roughly once every several days. He describes this as "on an off and on basis." However, for people with specific mineral deficiencies or metal toxicity, he increases this allocation.

Aajonus provides his own hair mercury levels as a personal safety reference. Despite eating what he describes as enormous quantities of his favorite high-mercury fish: "I had all my hair on different parts of my body checked and I didn't have over 4.28." He notes that mercury is not considered toxic in hair analysis until 11 points, and is considered "very toxic" at 14 points. His personal level of 4.28, maintained while eating swordfish heavily, is his primary argument that the body on a raw food diet processes and eliminates mercury efficiently.

Across various accounts, Aajonus cites mercury levels in the swordfish he tested: - Newsletter (1989 experiment, 53-pound fish from Oxnard/Ventura waters): 13.3 µg/g, described as "very high, probably because of all of the military and industrial waste from Oxnard and Ventura" - Workshop account (one telling): 13.2 (approximate) - Workshop account (another telling): "about a 9", described as "pretty high up around 9" - Workshop account (another telling): registered levels between 11 and 15, described as "highly toxic" by conventional standards - Human toxicity threshold cited by Aajonus: toxic above 11, very toxic above 14

The variation in cited mercury levels across different accounts reflects the fact that Aajonus performed or referenced multiple tests on different fish at different times. The 13.3 µg/g from the formal newsletter is likely the most precisely documented figure.

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Serves 1

• 5 to 8 ounces fresh swordfish
• 4 tablespoons fresh lemon or lime juice
• 1 fresh hot pepper (like jalapeño)
• 2 ounces stone-pressed olive oil
• Small assortment of herbs or lettuce

Method: Grate and finely chop pepper. Stir juice, olive oil, and pepper together for 1 minute. Slice swordfish into strips. Arrange fish in a pattern on plate. Pour oil/juice/pepper mixture over fish.

Aajonus describes preparing this when he had a tooth detox that made chewing painful. He cut the swordfish into slices, made a sauce with butter, ginger, and honey, and then put the entire mixture through a food processor to create a pate. He specifies that a food processor is acceptable for this because it does not apply pressure in the same damaging way a meat grinder does, making it safe to liquefy fish without destroying the food.

The carpaccio preparation described is explicitly applicable to seafood, and swordfish fits within this framework. The formula: - 5 tablespoons stone-pressed olive oil - 2 tablespoons grated no-salt-added raw cheese - 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh bay leaves - 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil leaves - 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley - 1 slice minced or crushed fresh garlic (optional) - 1 teaspoon chopped fresh red onion (optional) - 5 to 8 ounces meat (explicitly includes seafood) - 1 mushroom

Method: Vigorously stir olive oil, bay, basil, onion, and garlic together for 1 minute. Slice meat into thin luncheon meat-sized slices using a food processor with slicing plate. In a covered bowl at room temperature, marinate meat slices in sauce for 1 to 3 hours. Spread meat and sauce on plate and sprinkle with cheese and top with parsley.

Aajonus alludes to preparing swordfish with a wasabi-style preparation, mentioning: "Like when I make a wasabi, I will take the...", the passage is cut off, but it connects swordfish to an avocado-based or wasabi-style presentation consistent with a Japanese sashimi format.

Aajonus describes a raw sauce that works well with oysters and swordfish: "You can take tomatoes and blend them with a little hot pepper, fresh hot pepper, you know, some butter. Delicious. And maybe a little bit of lemon juice."

Aajonus describes allowing swordfish to ripen over weeks in the context of his experiment, and describes both himself and the animal subjects continuing to eat it as it became "very ripe." He does not provide a specific curing or fermentation protocol for swordfish beyond the jar-airing protocol described in the therapeutic section above. He does reference the general principle that raw fish stored in sealed jars can remain viable: "I stuff it into these jars keeps very nicely... I opened them up a year later and I still had a little air space in them they were as fresh as when I put them in there."

Aajonus's subjective descriptions of swordfish's flavor are consistent across accounts. He calls it his "favorite-tasting fish." He describes eating three pounds in a sitting of fresh-caught swordfish "like candy was to me as a kid." He describes a rattlesnake he once killed and ate raw as tasting "a little like swordfish." His enthusiasm for the flavor of swordfish is a recurring theme.

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Aajonus is consistent and emphatic across multiple seminar accounts that the public narrative about dangerous mercury in fish is a deliberate smoke screen created by pharmaceutical and industrial interests to divert attention from the actual sources of mercury poisoning in the human population, specifically, mercury in vaccines, penicillin, and other pharmaceutical injections.

He states: "There's also one other little confusion that the government is throwing you into and that's that the mercury in fish is causing all of our mercury pollution. The most ridiculous bullshit. Mercury pollution is coming from industry, especially the military industry. Mercury is a byproduct of making the tanks and ammunition. Mercury in vaccines. Where do you think they're feeding people that mercury from vaccines? It comes from the waste of the industry."

He further states: "Mercury in fish is not our problem. The pharmaceutical industry injecting it, with vaccines, penicillin, everything else, that's the real problem there. And the pharmaceutical industry are trying to throw you off, make a smoke screen. Your mercury poisoning is coming from medication, not from fish. That's a smoke screen."

He describes the FDA's publicizing of mercury dangers in fish as "suspicious at best and conspiratorial at worst," noting: "What the story is not telling us is that the FDA has allowed millions of pregnant women and children to be poisoned with mercury from vaccinations and other injections. Does it make any sense that the poisoning from medications exceeds that of their estimate for eating fish by thousands of times, and they are so hysterical over food poisoning? It appears to me that this 'fish story' is a smoke screen to throw people off the track: that they suffer mercury poisoning from medical therapies rather than eating fish."

He also argues that the people in the general population who have the highest mercury levels are not fish eaters: "People don't even eat fish that are in the society have tons of mercury in their body, high mercury levels. So it can't be the fish."

Aajonus cites Japan as evidence that even in extremely polluted ocean waters, regular consumption of raw fish does not cause mercury poisoning. He states: "I don't know any water that's more toxic than Japanese... and they don't have any of that kind of mercury poisoning. In 1959, in Japan, you could take a roll of film that you'd shot, and you could dump it into the river, I mean the ocean, right off the pier, and develop it. Kodak, their chemical waste, right into the ocean. You could develop your film just by dipping it in... and these people have been eating raw fish... all the time. You know, in the late 60s, early 70s, but there's still more pollution in the Japanese [waters]... and Jacksonville, Florida."

He acknowledges that some cooked fish (like eel) is part of Japanese cuisine, but notes that the tradition of eating raw fish is dominant and that this population, despite eating from highly polluted waters for generations, did not exhibit the mercury poisoning that the fish-mercury narrative would predict.

Aajonus describes a legal environment in which people were filing or threatening to file lawsuits against the fishing industry, claiming that eating fish caused their mercury poisoning. He frames this as misattribution: "Lawsuits because people are correlating, oh, I'm eating too much fish, I've got all this mercury in my body. Hogwash."

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