NationStates Jolt Archive


interesting article: Raw fruit is best for health

Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 19:44
As a vegetarian I sometimes read up on raw foods as well. I saw this and wanted to share it with anyone who might care :)

I try to eat some raw (live) foods myself but I can't let go of my warm meals and fake meat. :p


Top ten reasons why we are natural fruit eaters
and why eating lots of sweet fruit is safe and
completely natural for healthy people.

Raw sweet fruit is the staple food for humans.
We can and should eat lots of vegetables, leafy
greens and some nuts and seeds. But sweet fruit
is the best thing for healthy humans. Here's a
list of ten reasons, why I believe that to be the
case.

Top Ten List:

1. Fruit has beautiful attractive colors and
scents. It tastes great and it's easy for us to
get.

2. You feel happy after eating fruit. Raw fruit
has a special electrical charge or something
about it that makes you feel happy when you eat
it. Cooking, pasteurizing and drying fruit
removes this happiness effect.

3. Fruit can make a complete and tasty meal by
itself.

4. Fruit is the easiest food for us to digest.
Raw fruit frees up the most energy for us because
it digests in the least time out of any other raw
whole foods. This is why raw foodists who eat
fruit have so much extra energy and why their
bodies can heal.

5. We know that early humans were predominantly
fruit eaters.

From "Fit for Life," by Harvey and Marilyn
Diamond, page 62.

On May 15, 1979, The New York Times ran a story
on the work of Dr. Alan Walker, an eminent
anthropologist at John Hopkins University. The
story was a bombshell for those doctors,
dietitians and nutritionists not aware of the
immense importance of fruit in the human diet.
Dr. Walker's findings indicate that our "early
human ancestors were not predominantly meat
eaters or eaters of seeds, shoots, leaves or
grasses. Nor were they omnivorous. Instead they
appear to have subsisted chiefly on a diet of
fruit." Dr. Walker developed a fascinating way of
determining dietary trends by studying the
striations, or markings, on teeth. All foods
leave distinctly different markings on teeth. In
his studies of fossilized teeth, Dr. Walker noted
that, to date, "No exceptions have been found.
Every tooth examined from the hominids of the
twelve-million year period leading up to Homo
Erectus appeared to be that of a fruit eater."

6. Our closest primate relatives the Chimpanzees
and the Bonobos naturally eat a high fruit and
low fat diet. The digestive systems of these
primates are very similar to our own. The DNA of
the Bonobos is at least 99% the same as that of
humans.

7. Most fruit are low to middle on the Glycemic
Index. Even bananas are considered on the low end
of the Glycemic Index. According to the book,
"The New Glucose Revolution," bananas are a 51
with foods 0 - 55 considered on the low end of
the Glycemic Index. Intermediate is 56 - 69 and
high is 70 or higher.

Cooked starches and complex carbohydrates are
often much higher on the Index than raw fruit. It
used to be believed that complex carbohydrates
break down into blood sugar much more slowly than
simple sugars, but it is now known that there are
many other factors that affect the Glycemic Index
of a food. Cooked starches have been shown to
cause hyper and hypo thyroid problems as well as
damaging blood sugar metabolism.

8. Fruit has the nutrients and fibers to help
slow the absorption of their sugars into the
bloodstream. This creates a steady rise in blood
sugar in people with a healthy blood sugar
metabolism. Diabetics are now given fibers such
as guar gum to slow the absorption of sugars from
their meals. Guar gum is naturally present in
bananas.

9. Fruits are very high in antioxidants and
phytonutrients that have been shown to prevent
cancer and heart disease. A tomato contains over
10,000 phytochemicals. Animal foods have low to
no levels of these nutrients.

From "Eat to Live," page 53: The greater
quantity and assortment of fruits and vegetables
consumed, the lower the incidence of heart
attacks, strokes and cancer. (This particular
quote is substantiated by six studies he
references in the back of his book. I'll give you
the first one to start out with: Gillman, M. W.,
L. A. Cupples, D. Gagnon, et al. 1995. Protective
effect of fruits and vegetables on development in
stroke in men. JAMA 273 (14) 1113-17.)

10. Every cell in the body is fueled by glucose
and most cells by fructose, these sugars are
abundant in raw fruits. Sugar is the bodies
preferred fuel.

Fruit is the miracle food for athletes as stated
by the former director of nutrition for the US.
Olympic Team. It provides the fuel needed for
fast acceleration. Fat cannot fuel any kind
anaerobic or fast paced activities like
sprinting, playing basketball or tennis. I've
also found that the more muscle I put on the more
my need for fruit increases dramatically. I never
crave meat, but I do crave fruit after working out.
Jamil
03-03-2005, 19:45
Isn't all fruit raw? Not many people cook fruits.
Korarchaeota
03-03-2005, 19:58
No big surprise there. The more we overprocess our food, the worse it gets for us.

(Slups on a nice juicy Florida orange sent to me last week.)
Naturality
03-03-2005, 20:03
Yes, fruits are great :)

So are fresh veggies.

Veggie cooking > http://stu.aii.edu/~pl121/213_sk_vege.htm <

" One of the major challenges of cooking vegetables is the preservation of the nutrients they contain. Many of these nutrients are destroyed when the vegetable is cooked. The goal is to cook vegetables while causing as little nutrient loss as possible.

This can be done by:

1. Cooking with steam whenever possible.
2. Using the shortest cooking timespossible.
3. Avoiding the use of baking soda or other forms of alkali.
4. Storing fresh vegetables out of direct sunlight in closed containers. "
Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 20:04
Isn't all fruit raw? Not many people cook fruits.

no all fruit isn't raw. and yes many people cook fruits. there is also dehydrated fruit.
Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 20:07
Yes, fruits are great :)

So are fresh veggies.

Veggie cooking > http://stu.aii.edu/~pl121/213_sk_vege.htm <

" One of the major challenges of cooking vegetables is the preservation of the nutrients they contain. Many of these nutrients are destroyed when the vegetable is cooked. The goal is to cook vegetables while causing as little nutrient loss as possible.

This can be done by:

1. Cooking with steam whenever possible.
2. Using the shortest cooking timespossible.
3. Avoiding the use of baking soda or other forms of alkali.
4. Storing fresh vegetables out of direct sunlight in closed containers. "


Thanks for the tips!

yeah I do some of that stuff. I love steamed veggies. My gf just got me a raw foods "cook"book and it looks liek it has some delicious stuff. Theres also some really wierd stuff.

I love fresh fruits and veggies. :)
Jamil
03-03-2005, 20:16
no all fruit isn't raw. and yes many people cook fruits. there is also dehydrated fruit.

Hehe okay then. I get me fruits from the farm, wash em, then eat em.
Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 20:35
Hehe okay then. I get me fruits from the farm, wash em, then eat em.


lucky ass! I live in Vegas and its hard to find good fruits, and they are all expensive and theres hardly anything organic. :(
Illich Jackal
03-03-2005, 20:41
As a vegetarian I sometimes read up on raw foods as well. I saw this and wanted to share it with anyone who might care :)

I try to eat some raw (live) foods myself but I can't let go of my warm meals and fake meat. :p

"3. Fruit can make a complete and tasty meal by
itself."

I have nothing against fruit, it's good and tastes good, but this statement is just dangerous.
Jamil
03-03-2005, 20:43
lucky ass! I live in Vegas and its hard to find good fruits, and they are all expensive and theres hardly anything organic. :(

Move to Canada then :)

I live in a very Mediterranean area of town so there's quite a few reliable places to get good fruits/veggies.
Domici
03-03-2005, 21:04
My biggest problem with the idea that we're supposed to eat mostly fruit without cooking is how many ideas on which the rawists base their arguments are just plain wrong.

Myth: No significant evolution has taken place within the last 15,000 to allow humans to adjust to the demands of an agricultural diet.

Truth, in parts of the earth dominated by hunter/gatherer societies until the last few hundred years the predominant blood type is O. In areas dominated by agricultural civilizatons the blood types A and B have become more prevelant. These blood types and other physiological adjustments make for more efficient use of agricultural products and dairy products. Type O is best suited to root vegetables and some fruit for carbohydrates and animal flesh for protien.

Myth: No significant evolution has taken place since the domestication of fire, used for cooking food.

Truth, our evolutionary predecessors used fire. We have most certainly evolved since then, into an entierly different species.

Myth: People in a natural environment mostly eat fruit. Protien comes mostly from nuts.

Truth, fruit naturally grows in forms that are unpleasant and often inedible to humans. We were not able to produce apples as we know them today until the middle ages. Most sweet fruits cross polinate with sour and bitter varieties making it so that they almost never occur in nature, certainly not in the amounts neccessary to maintain a human population. Most nuts hardly occur in edible varieties at all. Wild almonds are so bitter that they are almost inedible, and so full of cyanide that if you ate them you'd die quite quickly. Acorns are intolerably bitter and require significant processing before being edible.

Myth: Humans lack any claws or fangs like natural predators so clearly it is unnatural for us to eat animal products because we can't catch them without unnatural technology. Just like chimpanzees.

Truth, Chimps hunt without any of these natural weapons, they kill birds, monkies, and reptiles. Females tend to focus on "fishing" for ants because it is difficult to go chasing after monkies with babies on your back. Even a human who has never practiced the hunting skills to which he is natrually inclined will still be able to hunt for eggs, shellfish, and slow moving reptiles and insects. These are hunting skills to which we are so naturally inclined that we tend to think of them more as foraging when they are employed for food, and pest control the rest of the time.

Anyone who got to the end of this post without falling asleep might be interested to read more here (http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-1a.shtml) , but I've probably made my point already.
Domici
03-03-2005, 21:04
lucky ass! I live in Vegas and its hard to find good fruits, and they are all expensive and theres hardly anything organic. :(

It has seafood buffets in the desert, how can they not have vegetables?
Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 21:43
It has seafood buffets in the desert, how can they not have vegetables?

They have vegetables, it's just that they are expensive and rarely organic.

Avocados are like $1.50 each :(
Domici
03-03-2005, 21:44
As a vegetarian I sometimes read up on raw foods as well. I saw this and wanted to share it with anyone who might care :)

I try to eat some raw (live) foods myself but I can't let go of my warm meals and fake meat. :p
op ten reasons why we are natural fruit eaters
and why eating lots of sweet fruit is safe and
completely natural for healthy people.

Raw sweet fruit is the staple food for humans. We can and should eat lots of vegetables, leafy greens and some nuts and seeds. But sweet fruit is the best thing for healthy humans. Here's a list of ten reasons, why I believe that to be the case.

Top Ten List:

1. Fruit has beautiful attractive colors and scents. It tastes great and it's easy for us to get.

But most fruit that occurs in nature is awful. Does the phrase crabapple ring a bell? Most nuts are outright poisonous. Fruits as we know them today are the result of years, sometimes millenea of manipulation by semi-nomadic semi-agricultural societies.

2. You feel happy after eating fruit. Raw fruit has a special electrical charge or something about it that makes you feel happy when you eat it. Cooking, pasteurizing and drying fruit removes this happiness effect.

So does chocolate, and that's about as artificial a food as you can get.

3. Fruit can make a complete and tasty meal by itself.
So can warm bread made by a good baker.

4. Fruit is the easiest food for us to digest. Raw fruit frees up the most energy for us because it digests in the least time out of any other raw whole foods. This is why raw foodists who eat fruit have so much extra energy and why their bodies can heal.

Just because a food is digested quickly does not make it good as a primary food source. Refined sugar is the easiest thing in the world to digest and that's what's wrong with it. Bacteria feast on it and after 10-15 minutes the sugar is all digested and your supply is exhausted. A steak will supply you with nutrition for days.

Take a look at animals who rely on these diets. Lions who eat meat can eat once and don't have to eat again for days. Rabbits who eat grass have to eat constantly.

5. We know that early humans were predominantly fruit eaters.

From "Fit for Life," by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, page 62.

On May 15, 1979, The New York Times ran a story on the work of Dr. Alan Walker, an eminent anthropologist at John Hopkins University. The story was a bombshell for those doctors, dietitians and nutritionists not aware of the immense importance of fruit in the human diet. Dr. Walker's findings indicate that our "early human ancestors were not predominantly meat eaters or eaters of seeds, shoots, leaves or grasses. Nor were they omnivorous. Instead they appear to have subsisted chiefly on a diet of fruit." Dr. Walker developed a fascinating way of determining dietary trends by studying the
striations, or markings, on teeth. All foods leave distinctly different markings on teeth. In his studies of fossilized teeth, Dr. Walker noted that, to date, "No exceptions have been found. Every tooth examined from the hominids of the twelve-million year period leading up to Homo Erectus appeared to be that of a fruit eater."

But scratchings on a twelve-million year old tooth are neither reliable nor relevant. We have evolved beyond our 10,000 year old diet, we have certainly evolved beyond our 12,000,000 year old diet. Besides, I've read Fit for Life, it's full of crap.

They try to argue that meat provides no energy because meat eaters like to lie around a lot. They don't seem to understand that because meat provides so much energy those animals that eat it don't need to run around looking for more food. A snake can eat one meat meal and not eat again for months!

He then goes on to argue that if we were supposed to eat meat we would only like to eat it raw. A) there are plenty of fruits and vegetables that taste better cooked (grilled peppers and onions, mushrooms). B) The Inuit eat meat raw. C) he completly overlooks the affect of culture on food preperation even though he uses cultural "contamination" as an argument against the naturalness of eating meat. A bit hypocritical I think.

6. Our closest primate relatives the Chimpanzees and the Bonobos naturally eat a high fruit and low fat diet. The digestive systems of these primates are very similar to our own. The DNA of the Bonobos is at least 99% the same as that of humans.

They are not solely fruit eaters. They hunt, the developed tools to eat nuts, they eat leaves and bugs.

7. Most fruit are low to middle on the Glycemic Index. Even bananas are considered on the low end of the Glycemic Index. According to the book, "The New Glucose Revolution," bananas are a 51 with foods 0 - 55 considered on the low end of the Glycemic Index. Intermediate is 56 - 69 and high is 70 or higher.

Accorting to the Glycemic index Jelly Beans are healthier than carrots. Don't put too much faith in that fat metric.

Cooked starches and complex carbohydrates are often much higher on the Index than raw fruit. It used to be believed that complex carbohydrates break down into blood sugar much more slowly than simple sugars, but it is now snown that there are many other factors that affect the Glycemic Index of a food. Cooked starches have been shown to cause hyper and hypo thyroid problems as well as damaging blood sugar metabolism.

Refined grains like white flour and white rice hardly count as proper complex carbohydrates. People from agricultural stocks evolved to whole grain diets rich in oats, wheat, barley, and beans, supplemented by lots of animal protien. Not lots by modern American standards of course, but a fairly consistent supply.

8. Fruit has the nutrients and fibers to help slow the absorption of their sugars into the bloodstream. This creates a steady rise in blood sugar in people with a healthy blood sugar metabolism. Diabetics are now given fibers such as guar gum to slow the absorption of sugars from their meals. Guar gum is naturally present in bananas.

9. Fruits are very high in antioxidants and phytonutrients that have been shown to prevent cancer and heart disease. A tomato contains over 10,000 phytochemicals. Animal foods have low to no levels of these nutrients.

From "Eat to Live," page 53: The greater quantity and assortment of fruits and vegetables consumed, the lower the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and cancer. (This particular quote is substantiated by six studies he references in the back of his book. I'll give you the first one to start out with: Gillman, M. W., L. A. Cupples, D. Gagnon, et al. 1995. Protective effect of fruits and vegetables on development in stroke in men. JAMA 273 (14) 1113-17.)

Perhaps, but they don't provide the materials with which the human body builds itself. Wheat is about 15% protien 80% starch and 5% oil. You can live on that. If you farm beans, or hunt meat you can thrive on that. Fruits don't provide any protien and nuts don't occur in enough quantities to provide proper nutrition in a natural environment.

10. Every cell in the body is fueled by glucose and most cells by fructose, these sugars are abundant in raw fruits. Sugar is the bodies preferred fuel.

All sugar and starch eventually becomes glucouse in the human body. Sugar is the bodies only fuel. Fruit is great for short term energy boosts, but you can't live on them. You will be more well nurished if you supplement a whole grain and meat diet with fruit, but if you have to pick one or the other, take whole grains.

Fruit is the miracle food for athletes as stated by the former director of nutrition for the US.
Olympic Team. It provides the fuel needed for fast acceleration. Fat cannot fuel any kind anaerobic or fast paced activities like sprinting, playing basketball or tennis. I've also found that the more muscle I put on the more my need for fruit increases dramatically. I never crave meat, but I do crave fruit after working out.

There are a fair number of olympic atheletes who swear by McDonalds. Not to mention plenty of highly successful African athletes whose diet consists mostly of meat with verly little grain, fruit or vegetables.
Sumamba Buwhan
03-03-2005, 21:58
Move to Canada then :)

I live in a very Mediterranean area of town so there's quite a few reliable places to get good fruits/veggies.


Yeah I plan on moving to Canada in like 5 years.