(This is Part 2 of a 2-part series. (Go back to Part 1.)
The most common arguments against the fruitarian diet are that:
1) It doesn't provide enough protein.
2) You'll waste away.
3) Some people don't tolerate fruit very well, including those with digestive problems or candidiasis.
4) Hypoglycemics can't eat fruit because their blood sugar would go on a roller-coaster ride.
Let's consider those points:
1) By calories, fruit provides an average of about 5% protein. This happens to be the same as mother's milk, which is also about 5% protein. And let's remember, our diet is mother's milk at the time when we're growing most rapidly and need protein the most.
Moreover, the protein in fruit is pre-digested, since it comes in the form of free amino acids and doesn't need to be broken down first. Further, the protein in fresh fruit is uncooked, which means it's more available to and usable by the body, so that we need less of it than otherwise.
Studies of nitrogen loss by the World Health Organization and others have shown than an adult male weighing 154 pounds (70 kg) needs only 21 grams of protein a day; an adult female only 17 grams.
Compare that to the 150 grams of protein that the average American eats every day, due to our "cult" of protein. This over-eating of protein (especially animal protein and its accompanying fat), according to the definitive China Project and other studies, leads directly to the various degenerative diseases that plague us.
2) Essie Honaball, of South Africa, writes in her book I Live On Fruit that she had a rare disease where she was wasting away. After seeing every medical practitioner she could, without success, she happened to run into a man named Cornelius de Villiers-Dreyer, who was 76 years old at the time she met him.
Cornelius was one of the great fruitarians and educators of life. When Essie Honaball met him, he had been living on fruits and nuts for most of his life and had such mental and physical vitality at 76 that she was astonished by it.
Even though she was in a very wasted condition, he counseled her to begin a fruitarian diet. Out of sheer desperation, she agreed.
What happened? She wasted away even more! She said that at a certain point she looked like the victim of a concentration camp. But then, on the very same diet, she noticed suddenly that she was gaining weight. Her body, after it had finished detoxifying itself, took her up to a normal weight—where she stayed from them on.
T. C. Fry, who was very overweight when he began, had the same experience of first losing weight as his body cleansed itself, and then, on the very same diet of fruit and nuts, gaining weight until he reached his normal 155 pounds and stayed there. When the body becomes healthy it seeks out its normal weight, just as it rebalances and rebuilds everything else.
3) What about people who can't "tolerate" fruits, or who don't digest them well, or who have candidiasis? People with great experience in fruitarian diets recommend a fast or a series of short fasts in that case. They say that once the body detoxifies and rebuilds itself, that fruit is not only well-tolerated but actually proves to be the most satisfying and easily-digestible food.
Indeed, many of the people in the experiment in South Africa felt at first that they would not be able to live on fruit, yet they refused to leave the diet once they'd been on it for a few months. Understandably so, since they were enjoying a vibrant health and vitality that they hadn't thought possible.
4) What about hypoglycemia and low blood-sugar on fruit? I can personally remark on this since I had hypoglycemia for much of my life. Indeed, it was so severe that in school I would often faint right out of my desk and wake up in the nurse's office. On a vegan diet this situation improved greatly, but not completely.
What I can report about a fruitarian diet is that my energy is absolutely rock-steady for the first time. It's a constant, steady supply—exactly the opposite of what I'd expected. Quite surprising.
The results that Prof. B. Meyer of South Africa found in his experiment were also surprising to him. But perhaps we can learn something from that experiment, and from Cornelius Villiers-Dreyer and T. C. Fry and Essie Honaball and the other great pioneers of the fruitarian diet. Maybe, just maybe, it really is our natural diet.
—jim sloman, for 5/29/02
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