This is Part 3 of a 3-part article. (Go back to Part 2.)
A diet of all-fruit could also be called, in modern terms, a diet of all-dessert. That's why nature gave us a sweet tooth, to attract us in the uncorrupted state to the natural sweetness of fruit, our natural food to which we evolved as symbionts of fruit-bearing plants.
For energy purposes, our body runs on glucose, which fruits amply supply as fructose and glucose. But the natural sugar in fruits, surrounded by fiber and vitamins and minerals and enzymes and thousands of phytochemicals, bears no relationship whatever to the artificial, denatured, concentrated sugars of jams and pastries and cakes and cookies and sodas. The latter are harmful to us; the former are natural and healthful.
What about protein? Wouldn't a raw foods diet of mostly fruit not supply enough protein?
Consider that our greatest need for protein comes when we are first growing. Then consider than mother's milk contains only 5% protein, far less than cow's milk—a baby calf is growing at quadruple the rate of a human baby.
That 5% protein in our mother's milk happens to be the same percentage of protein found on average in fruit—about 5%. And since the protein hasn't been cooked (and thus coagulated and damaged), it's much more available to and usable by the body than cooked protein.
Studies of the nitrogenous losses of humans each day have established that the actual protein need of a 154-pound male (70 kilos), for instance, is 21 grams a day. (The RDA for protein was derived by raising that figure by 33%, and then doubling that figure.)
It's an interesting fact that a fruitarian diet will supply almost double that figure of 21 grams of protein each day. Moreover, that protein comes in the form of free amino acids rather than proteins, making the protein pre-digested, and again, much more available to the body.
What about essential fatty acids? Linoleic acid (omega-6), the only essential fatty acid, and linolenic acid (omega-3), are both supplied by fruit, in an average amount of about 1-to-2%.
In addition, the addition of some leafy greens, avocado (botanically a fruit), and/or a small portion of raw nuts and seeds to our diet, easily gives us more than enough fatty acids in a non-carcinogenic (that is, unheated), easily available form.
What about vitamin B-12? We might note that all animals that eat plants contain vitamin B-12 in their tissues, yet the grasses and fruits and so on that the various herbivores (plant-eaters) consume contains no B-12. Where are these animals getting their B-12 from?
It turns out that when the intestinal flora of animals is healthy, that is, non-putrefactive, that a plentiful amount of B-12 is produced by bacteria residing all up and down the alimentary canal.
This is just as true of humans as of animals. If our intestinal flora is healthy—meaning that we're eating close to our natural diet, and have detoxed a bit—then bacteria in our intestinal system produce ample B-12 for the body. In fact, studies where primates were kept on all-fruit diets for many years could not induce a B-12 deficiency—the animals remained perfectly healthy.
In the 1930's, the citrus industry wanted to find out how long it would take for someone eating a diet of only oranges to get sick. Six years later, when the experiment was discontinued, the man was still in perfect health and said that he had never felt better in his life.
People who are fruitarians, who eat primarily fruits with the addition of some nuts and seeds and greens, report that the body powerfully detoxifies and rebuilds itself over time on such a diet.
The other day I ran into someone who had adopted a natural fruitarian diet to attempt to heal herself from cancer. I had not seen her for a year-and-a-half. The problem was, I couldn't recognise her!
She had changed so drastically that, even though I knew that I knew her, I couldn't tell who she was. Her radiant skin, her shiny hair, her whole body glowing with health, was in such contrast to her previous state that she had to finally tell me who she was.
And people who have gone thoroughly through the long process of complete detoxification on a fruitarian diet report that they eventually enter a kind of natural state of euphoria—which, it comes as a shock to realise, is actually our natural state of being as designed by our beneficent mother Nature.
Based on the above, I've recently begun this kind of diet—all-raw and primarily fruitarian. The first thing I can report on an all-living diet is that one's taste buds undergo a kind of revolution and become much sharper. Foods that seemed to be a bit bland before seem to explode with flavor. It's quite amazing.
As and when other developments follow, I'll report on them. Meantime, here's to your health. May it be all that you would desire.
—jim sloman, for 4/30/02
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