I've been eating a mostly fruitarian diet for a few months now, incorporating some salad. I'm not a purist about it; I eat about 70% raw food, mostly fruits, and about 30% cooked. And I don't deprive myself; if I feel like having a particular food I have it. (I do, however, stay within the vegetable kingdom as I don't wish to hurt animals.)
A few months is a brief time, but here's what I can report so far on a largely fruitarian diet:
The first surprise is that there's no sense of lack. I thought I would be missing certain foods, like soup or bread. But if I want those things I just have them; they're part of my 30%. Again, I'm not trying to be a purist; I'm just attracted more and more to fresh fruits and raw nuts and green salad. For me it's mostly a practical matter now: I'm going towards what i'm attracted to.
The second surprise is foods that I always thought of as a little bland, like a salad, are suddenly exploding with flavor. My taste buds have sharpened to an almost incredible degree. Various fruits seem like they're bursting with flavor, but they haven't changed—I have. A lucious, ripe fruit now seems like heaven.
The third surprise is that my blood sugar is the most stable of my life. When I was a child I had terrible problems with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), often fainting in school and elsewhere. The problem diminished greatly when I turned on to whole-grain foods and became a vegan, but I experienced noticeable, though less extreme, ups and downs.
Moreover, I always thought that the absolute worst diet I could eat would be mostly fruit—what a sugar roller-coaster I'd be on if I ever did that! Well, I'm astonished to report that my blood sugar seems to be on a really even keel for the first time in my life. It's just this constant, steady energy—quite amazing.
The fourth surprise is that I no longer crave sweets to the same degree. All my life I craved sweets. Even after I gave them up several times I still craved them. I loved chocolate chip cookies, chocolate frozen yogurt, pastries and so on. Sometimes I ate them, sometimes I didn't, but I always wanted them. Sometimes I still want them, but not to the same degree. I'll still have a chocolate sweet now and then, but if I don't that's fine too.
That greater sense of detachment towards sweets may be because, in a sense, I'm eating mostly desserts now. I make entire meals out of dessert. I'll have a banana or two, perhaps some grapes or papaya or whatever. I get to eat sweets all day—natural sweets, filled with natural fiber, minerals, thousands of phyto-chemicals, vitamins, enzymes, the works.
Now I sense why I've had a sweet tooth all these years—perhaps my body was craving its natural food, fruit. (See Our Natural Diet.) And like other civilized peoples, that natural taste or desire had been corrupted into a desire for chocolates and sweets and so on.
I'm often asked if I'm getting enough protein. Fruits on average are about 5% protein, in the form of free amino acids, which is the form in which the body can most easily use the protein. And this protein is more available and usable by the body because it is uncooked.
When was our need for protein the greatest? When we were infacts suckling at the breast. And it's a remarkable fact that mother's milk is only 5% protein by weight—the same as provided by fruit. And a study in South Africa, which followed fruitarians for 15 years, found no protein or B-12 deficiencies. What they did find was a tremendous vitality and a virtual absence of disease.
The fifth surprise comes at the grocery store. For many years I was used to going to our local health food store and coming out with $60 or $70 or $80 worth of groceries, Including supplements and boxes of this or jars of that. I still buy those things sometimes, just a lot less.
Now I go to the same store and I come out with a bill of $10 or $20. The first few times I actually wondered if the check-out clerk had missed something, the bill was so low.
But it's so low because I just mostly head for the produce section, especially the fruits—organic if possible. And then, after I finish with the produce section, I often realise I have nowhere else in the store to go. And I just head for the check-out counter. Most usually there's no bottles, jars, boxes, supplements, etc. Just live food, mostly lucious fruit.
The sixth surprise is that I'm so easily satiated. In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined having a couple of bananas for a meal and feeling perfectly satisfied. And if an hour or two later, or five hours later, I want some more—why not? I just eat now whenever it occurs to me, in this natural kind of rhythm.
That's what I can report so far. Oh—and a feeling of increasing lightness in the body. I guess that's the seventh surprise. After only a few months? Yep, I can feel it coming on. Or we could say, nature is coming on.
That ol' nature, she's the ultimate. She's a trip indeed.
—jim sloman, for 5/17/02
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