Living Fully Nourished

This information has been taken from T.C.Fry, “The Life Science HealthSystem”, Lesson 18 – Ascertaining The Human Dietetic Character, Part I  and Lesson 19 – Ascertaining The Human Dietetic Character, Part II.

"Most vegetarians fuel their bodies with what is called vegetarian fare or plant eaters. We contend that we are not herbivores.

I will endeavor to demonstrate that vegetarian fare lacks the most fundamental requirement for human food and that it fails to meet many necessary criteria to be the basis of the human dietary.

Our natural foods must necessarily appeal to ALL our relevant senses. It follows that our natural foods must delight our eyes, be of a fragrance that tantalizes our olfactory senses, and be of such titillating quality to the taste buds as to be ambrosia. Eating should always be a gustatory delight. Our development in nature was such that discomforts and unpleasantness were never a condition of life. Only when we deviate from our natural adaptations do we suffer. Hence it is a truism that our natural foods are enchanting to the eye, captivating to smell, ecstatically delicious to eat and harmonious in the body. This truism invites comparisons based on sensual’ involvement in the selection and consumption of foods.

When we were entirely the children of Nature, we did not have utensils or cookstoves as a part of our endowment. We had to eat our foods as we found and gathered them in nature. So the ascertainment of the value of foods is necessarily based on the condition in which foods come to us from nature, in their living or raw state, at the peak of perfection. The comparisons I am about to set forth must be valid for you only if they relate to your preferences.

Which would you prefer? The aromatic sweet flesh of a properly ripened pineapple or a head of broccoli? Would you rather have a delectable sun-ripened peach or a few raw collard greens? Would you prefer a stalk of celery or a bunch of purple concord grapes? Which entices you the most, a colorful juicy orange or spinach greens? Does a head of cabbage attract you as much as a properly ripened, brilliantly yellow and brown speckled banana? Which lures your eye most for beauty, a large red delicious apple or a freshly dug carrot? Does a basket of brussels sprouts turn your head as much as a basket of strawberries? Is the heavenly delicacy of a Cornice pear matched by anything you’ve ever eaten from the lettuce family?

If you’ve ever eaten a cherimoya, mango, mangosteen, soursop, sapodilla, fig, date, watermelon, cantaloup, honeydew or other mouthwatering delights, you know well their joys. Can you compare the eating of any single vegetable in its raw state to eating any of these heady delights? Can you not see that, in order for a food to be a natural item of human dietary, we must be capable of relishing that food eaten by itself in the raw state?

Not only must the food be a gourmet experience in its living state but our fill of it must furnish us with most if not all our nutrient needs. This is a most vital consideration.

Can you name a single vegetable that you’d ravish, as a full meal of itself in its raw state? Almost any vegetable that you can name fails in the first prerequisite of a food: it must furnish us amply of our fuel requirements. Almost every vegetable you name does not furnish us with any significant amount of caloric values. All green leaves, regardless of their calorie rating, yield us no net increase in calories. The energy of digestion and assimilation often exceed the calories obtained therefrom. Most of the calories of vegetables are bound in indigestible cellulose. Ruminants with four stomachs, true herbivores, can digest cellulose and thereby obtain fuel and nutrient values. We humans become as thin as a rail if we try to sustain ourselves on vegetable fare.

The potato, a tuber, is regarded as a vegetable. If eaten raw, it cannot be relished. Moreover, its starches cannot be utilized for two reasons. First, most of its food values are inaccessible to us because they are encapsulated in cellulose membranes. Secondly, those values which are freed quickly exhaust our supply of the starch-splitting enzyme, ptyalin (salivary amylase).

Cereal gains, which are popularly regarded as vegetables even though they are not, have the same drawbacks in digestion as does the potato. Grains occur in an edible state but a day or two in their cycles. Otherwise they’re inedible except upon heavy soaking or sprouting. Even when soaked or sprouted, every grain is deficient in one or several aspects of its nutrient complement. Most also offer digestive problems. The gluten of wheat, for instance, is indigestible. We simply don’t possess the enzymes to break it down. Wheat protein is bound as gluten. Further, most grains contain phytic acid, which we cannot handle. They bind calcium and thus rob us of that mineral salt.

An examination of every vegetable reveals it, when it stands on its own, as unsuited for human sustenance in some significant aspect or other. Fruit, on the other hand, supplies us amply with all our needs including proteins, mineral salts, vitamins, fuel and other vital food components, known and unknown.

We can relish fruits in their raw ripe state without any special preparation beyond pitting and/or peeling. I know of very few vegetables that would even begin to furnish our needs amply that we can make a meal of, even if we did relish them.

Without cookery and condiments most vegetables are unappealing. We must jazz up their lack of taste appeal with stimulating herbs or unwholesome flavorings, fats, seasonings, etc. We must deceive our senses in order to consume vegetables. Condiments and cooking are very destructive to our health.

Most vegetarians eat fruits, even a preponderance of fruits, yet call themselves vegetarians. Many vegetarians consume fish, milk and dairy products and eggs and still fancy themselves vegetarians. Of course these products are not even vegetables. Vegetables are plants. But the seeds of plants, the legumes, the grains, certain fruits such as cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are regarded as vegetables though technically they are not.

Not all fruits meet the proper criteria as food for humans. Nuts and avocados are suitable as food but we could not sustain ourselves on them whereas we can sustain ourselves indefinitely on grapes, bananas, oranges, figs, dates and many other fruits. We’d never make it on fruits such as cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and squash any more so than we can make it on cabbage or celery.

A good indication of what our natural foods are can be determined by the natural preferences of a child that has been fed nothing but its mother’s milk. Does it like cereals or bananas’? Apples or cabbage? What will a child go for if let to choose its own food? In my experience such a child always has chosen fruits. When served vegetables, my child found them a chore to eat, though he ate them to some extent.

We have considered vegetables and fruits based on aesthetic appeal and fuel requirements. There are other touchstones for consideration which we shall now explore. Humans are classed as frugivora or frugivores or fruit eaters because of their anatomy, their primate character, their digestive faculties, their psychological disposition and their background in nature. Research has shown that we had an arboreal past—that we were once tree dwellers. At that time we depended upon the products of tree, and later upon the fruits of stalk and vine, for our sustenance.

For example, Dr. Alan Walker, an anthropologist of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, has done research that shows that humans were once exclusively fruit eaters. By careful examination of fossil teeth and fossilized remains of humans with the aid of electron microscopes and other sophisticated tools, Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were total fruitarians. These findings were reported in depth in the May 15, 1979 issue of the New York Times.

These findings complement other findings and verify the consistent scientific classification of humans as frugivora.

Creatures that live in accord with their biological heritage do not develop disease. They live out their normal life spans and die natural deaths. Humans have by and large strayed from their natural dietary and for that reason suffer disease and early death. Humans who undertake to live on their natural dietary and observe other modalities of healthful living also live unto a ripe old age and die a natural death. Although it is a rarity, people who touch base with life’s requisites have lived well past 100. In Hunza such a lifespan is a rule rather than the exception, even though their dietary is far from ideal.

Green leaves and stalks contain a greater concentration of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than fruits. But they also contain, in most cases, compounds we cannot handle well. Lettuce contains minute amounts of a poison called lactucarium, which is a soporific. It is contained in a milk-like substance, just as in the poppy. Large amounts of lactucarium can be gathered and converted to substances resembling opium and heroin.

Celery has bitter properties in the leaves which make them repulsive to the normal palate. Anything that disagrees with our taste buds has, ipso facto, been rejected at that point. That is not to say, on the other side of the ledger, that a pleasant taste is the sole criteria by which to select foods, even with foods as they occur in nature, our taste is the surest guide we have if our taste buds are unperverted.

It is well to always keep in mind that we are not naturally herbivores, graminivores, carnivores, insectivores or omnivores. Neither are we oil, protein or starch eaters except incidentally. Our protein needs are met amply from fruits but the occasional addition of nuts, seeds and greens insures dietary protein adequacy. However, we do not handle concentrated foods containing oil, proteins and arches with any great degree of efficiency. They are best eaten infrequently, perhaps two or three times weekly as Proteins require about 70% as much energy to digest and assimilate as they furnish whereas sweet fruits are so efficiently handled that the body is able to utilize over 90% of their caloric energy after deducting energies expended in ingestion and assimilation. Moreover, proteins are not used for energy as long as carbohydrates and fats are available.

That to which we are physiologically adapted is also most effectively and efficiently utilized. Vegetables, I repeat, yield us no calories as a rule though we do obtain from them a plethora of nutrients. Even so, fresh ripe raw fruits furnish us amply of our needs including proteins, vitamins and mineral salts. Even our very small need for essential fatty acids is well met by fruits. When we meet our requirements, that’s enough. Enough is all we need. Oversubscription can be like overloading a truck or a mule—it is very taxing and damaging.

Though vegetables are not natural to our dietary I must reiterate this observation: Not all vegetables are bad in our diet for they are consonant with our needs. On the same order, not all fruits are good for us. Many fruits are poisonous. Some, though not poisonous, are not handled well, such as oily fruits like Brazil nuts and pecans, high protein and fat content nuts and seeds such as almonds and sunflower, and starchy fruits such as pumpkins and chestnuts.

There are fruits that are poisonous, some of them poisonous before ripening, others poisonous after ripening. These latter should be excluded from man’s diet. An excellent example of a fruit of this kind, one that is commonly eaten, is the cranberry. Sumac berries we refrain from eating, because, although tasty, they are toxic. Some plant substances are poisonous to some animals and not to others. An example is belladona, which, highly poisonous to man, is non-toxic to the rabbit after it is six weeks old. After this age the rabbit secretes an enzyme that enables it to digest the two toxins in the plant. Man produces no such enzyme.

In the same manner a fruit that may be poisonous to man may prove to be an excellent food for other animals. Nothing seems to eat the sumac berries. It may be possible that they are toxic to all forms of life. They are regarded as good herbal medicines, precisely because they are toxic. My readers should keep always in mind the rule of medicine: If the plant is non-toxic, it is food; if it is toxic, it is “medicine.”

No natural food in the world rivals fruits for exquisiteness and wholesomeness. Inasmuch as tables of composition of foods show fruits replete with our needs, and inasmuch as we can more efficiently make use of the nutrients of fruits than any vegetable, legume or grain, we can safely confine ourselves to completely fruitarian fare with great benefit.

I believe the points made herein support overwhelmingly that we are fruitarians.
 

1. Humans Developed To Their Hight State Entirely On Fruits

Humans declare themselves to be the highest form of animal life. Paleontology teaches that hominid forms of life appeared on Earth some sixty million years ago. Distinct human forms have been identified from fossil finds dating back about four million years. Pre-hominid beings were insect eaters but, as some types of pre-hominids took to the trees, they gradually became fruit eaters.

Fruit eaters, proving quite harmonious to the needs of fruit-bearing trees, stimulated the growth of better and more nutritious fruits. Evolving trees developed the bearing of fruits as a viable way of existence.

The interplay between fruit-eating animals and fruit-bearing trees begot an ever greater profusion and variety of fruits. Myriads of different fruits were developed to attract fruit eaters. In this symbiotic relationship, trees grew fruits as foods for animals in exchange for a service—the service of seed distribution, thus insuring survival of kind.

On the other hand fruits proved such wonderful fare for fruit eaters that they became the raw materials for superior growth and endowment. Our ancestors of sixty million years ago weighed just a few pounds. They thrived so well on the fruit diet that they became too heavy for tree life. These precocious developers were called primates. The brains of certain branches of primate life, notably those branches which became humans, developed rapidly and became quite large relative to other forms of life.

Let us examine how this symbiosis between humans and fruit trees created the superb creatures which we regard ourselves as being.
 

1.1 The Evidence of Paleontology

Paleontology is that branch of science which deals with fossil remains. Inasmuch as our objective is to establish that fruits are our natural fare and that we thrive best on an all-fruit diet, we’ll refer to fossil evidence that particularly affirms our adaptation to fruit.

Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland examined the fossil remains of humans. After making detailed examinations, especially of the teeth, he concluded that humans were exclusively and only fruit eaters. Walker’s examinations were detailed in the May 15, 1979 issue of The New York Times. His findings came like a bombshell into our culture, where fruits are relatively sparse in the diet.
 

1.2 The Evidence of Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans. The study of anthropology involves the origin and development of humans in cultural, social, physical and racial aspects.

Anthropologists have established that human culture, social organization and body adaptations arose from a background in nature as a fruit-feeding animal. Humans, like their primate and simian cousins in nature, are clannish in social organization. Most of their acculturization involves the beauty of their natural foods, fruits, and the trees which produce them. Physically, humans developed on fruits just as our simian and other primate relatives in nature. In consequence anthropologists and biologists have classified humans as frugivores or fruit eaters.
 

1.3 The Evidence of Archaeology

Archaeology concerns itself with the artifacts of past peoples and civilizations. Archaeology also confirms our fruit growing and consuming past. Archaeological finds show that we’ve been heavy eaters of fruit from remotest antiquity. On the other hand, we’ve eaten grains only for the past six to ten thousand years. Our meat-eating past as civilized peoples has been limited to recent times and has usually been confined to those peoples living in the far North. Most of the world’s peoples still consume little or no meat. Grains have become a practically universal diet, though there are pockets of tuber, legume and fruit eaters.

Throughout Europe the mounds and great stones attest to fruit cultivation. Much pottery from ancient times has upon it inscriptions and drawings of fruit. Fruit-gathering and storing vessels are found over much of civilized earth. The records left by our ancestors attest to the great role fruits played in our dietary.
 

1.4 The Evidence of History

Much of our recorded history was destroyed during the destruction of the great libraries of Alexandria and Carthage. What remains tells us of great gardens and orchards. Herodotus, the Greek historian, records that Greeks were heavy eaters of olives, figs, dates, grapes, apples, oranges and other fare. This noted historian wrote: “The oldest inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, who came before the Dorian, Ionian and Elian migrations, inhabited Arcadia and Thessaly, possessing the islands of Lesbos and Lakemanas, which were full of orange groves. The people with their diet of dates and oranges lived on an average of more than 200 years.”

Another Greek, the poet Hesiod, said, “The Pelasgians and the people who came after them in Greece, ate fruits of the virgin forest and blackberries from the fields.” Plutarch, the Greek biographer, observed: “The ancient Greeks, before the time of Lycurgus, ate nothing but fruits.”

Pythagoras, one of the wisest of the ancient sages, is credited with being the father of mathematics, modern astronomy, philosophy and other sciences, and was perhaps the greatest, of all Greeks. His fare was almost entirely fruits. He left his mark on the world as no other man before him did. He was the author of the philosophy of the Essenians from whence originated many of the principles of Christianity as we know it.

Much of our history indicates that our ancestors were fruitarian. But, history books today omit or falsify our past and our fruit-eating nature. Biology and physiology books are also so altered. Even such a simple word as frugivore has been omitted from most current dictionaries and encyclopedias.
 

1.5 The Evidence of Legends and Traditions

Much of organized religion had its origins in sun and tree worshiping societies. Apollo is a god of the apple tree. His name means apple. Avalon means the fabled island of apples. The Garden of Eden was an orchard. Its walls corresponded with the ancient ”para desa” or walled orchards. These walls kept the orchards intact from animals and retained the day’s heat to protect against the night’s chill.

The most fabled land of fruits was Java. After this land was named, Japan, Hawaii and many other countries paid homage to Java as their homeland. Israel was once the land of Yahveh (YHVH), which may be pronounced the same as Java. Such names as valhalla (originally avalhalla) merely means “apple hole” or a place for apple storage. Many places throughout Europe as well as many of the pagan deities have names that correspond with Java and the names of fruits.

Henry Bailey Stevens has created an excellent book, The Recovery of Culture, which gives evidence of our fruitarian past as found in lingering legends and beliefs. Sir James G. Fraser’s The Golden Bough is the most thoroughgoing publication ever on the origins of deities, beliefs and rituals. A reading of The Golden Bough will quickly reveal that most systems of reverence were built around climate, the sun, trees and the fruits they produced.
 

1.6 The Evidence of Anatomy

What we are is attested to by our anatomical makeup. Our physical character has been determined by our arboreal past.

Fruitarians of the mammalian primate order have revolving joints in their shoulder, wrist and elbow joints. These allow for free movement in all directions. They have hands and fingers with apposable first digits (thumb) for grasping and gathering the product of trees. Fruit gatherers and tree dwellers have stereoscopic binocular vision. This makes possible vision that is precise in its ascertainment of positions of limbs and objects. Frugivores developed larger brains than their animal counterparts. All have only two mammary glands and usually have only one offspring per pregnancy. The teeth of humans are identical in almost every respect to our anthropoid relatives in number, kind and usage. We do not here intend to prove the biological relationship of our simian relatives. We only wish to prove that our teeth are practically identical to acknowledged frugivora.

Anatomically, humans are in most particulars unlike herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Every organ and system differs radically because each is suited to the animal’s respective modes of food acquisition, eating and digestion.
 

1.7 The Evidence of Physiology

The structures of humans attest them to be in every respect fruitarians. This fact is irrevocably confirmed by the functions of the human body. Every alimentary function is geared to a fruitarian dietary.

In keeping with other frugivora, human saliva is alkaline. An alkaline environment of the mouth and, consequently, the stomach, is chemically necessary to handle starches which are sometimes incidental to fruits. Further, it initiates the neutralization of the acids of many fruits.

In contrast, the saliva of meat-eating animals is of an extremely acid character. Proteins such as those found in meats require an acid medium for their digestion. The high acidity of the saliva of carnivora greatly assists in dissolving and digesting flesh with almost no mastication.

The natural food of humans is readily absorbed without any digestion other than the proteins, fats and starches incidentally it. The simple sugars of fruit undergo no change in the stomach or duodenum, being absorbed directly as fructose and glucose as it exists in fruits.

The fare that is recommended by conventional nutritionists is classified into the “basic four food groups.” The foods listed under the “basic four” present nearly impossible digestive tasks to the body, especially when combined into a single meal as advocated. Over 50% of the meals eaten in America result in indigestion. The cause for this indigestion is the eating of wrong foods wrongly combined.

Even if eaten alone, legumes result in digestive problems. We are not physiologically equipped to handle the heavy concentration and combinations of fat, starch and protein found in legumes.

Indigestion and gas result from the eating of legumes, especially if they’re eaten with foods other than green leaves, stalks and stems.

Even if eaten alone, meats will digest poorly and invariably undergo putrefaction to some extent before absorption. Even if eaten alone, grains and starchy foods stress the human digestive faculties.

Inordinate amounts of mechanical, chemical and nerve energy are required for the digestion of grains, whether eaten raw or cooked.

Physiologically, meats furnish us practically nothing except amino acids. Almost no energy is derived from flesh when man eats it. The amino acids of proteins will be broken down for energy only in the absence of carbohydrates and fats, which are our primary sources of energy. Hence, ingestion of protein foods beyond our small need of 20 to 30 grams daily is without justification and in practice is generative of pathological by-products.

Foods other than those of our biological adaptation usually have some indigestible components that make them toxic in the human body. For instance, milk is pathogenic to humans. We do not have the enzymes rennin and lactase to break down casein and lactose respectively. Wheat is pathogenic because we do not have enzymes to break down phytic acid and gluten. Other grains are similary pathogenic. Vegetables often have toxic substances, notably oxalic acid, mustard oil, allicin, aloin, glycosides, toxic alkaloids, etc.

When we consider human physiology, we must do so within the context of nature rather than in the environment of modern acculturization. Thus, we must consider foods that we would have eaten raw in the natural state in our pristine environment as being consonant with our physiological faculties. All the evidence points to fruits as being the food of our adaptation. The evidence points to nothing else—no insects, no grass, no grain, no leaves, stems or stalks, no animals, no tubers or roots and not even any nuts! The most conclusive evidence submitted has stated that we were exclusively and only fruit eaters.

Humans secrete a paucity of enzymes as compared with meat-eaters, omnivora, starch-eaters, etc. We secrete a very weak solution of hydrochloric acid necessary for meat eaters. We secrete very little of only one starch-splitting enzyme, amylase (ptyalin). And our ability to digest fats is also very poor. We have the ability to efficiently handle only one type of food—foods comprised of monosaccharides or simple sugars. Only fruits meet this requirement.

Fruits are said to be “cleansing” foods. The fruits do, not, of themselves, cleanse the body. The ascription is earned because the body handles fruits so efficiently it can redirect much of the energy that had been expended on wrong foods to the tasks of extraordinary elimination. Further, raw fruits or their juices do not leave any toxic substances in the body.

Fruits are our ideal food and the only foods capable of meeting our physiological capabilities in every respect.
 

1.8 The Evidence of Psychology

Of all the areas that have been explored as to our dietetic character, this aspect of our being has received scant attention. Fortunately, our psychological disposition has not changed with respect to our dietary nature, just as our physiology and anatomy are the same today as they were millions of years ago.

Imagine yourself in a state of nature today without tools, without any ability to make a fire—with only the resources of your natural equipment in a very food-rich environment. Let us say that, in your immediate area, there are open spaces and trees. Let us presume that a substantial number of these trees bear fruits and nuts. Let us presume that in the open spaces grow grass, tubers and weeds. Let us further presume that the environment has a prolific fauna of birds, rabbits, squirrels, hogs, deer and other creatures.

Picture yourself in this environment. Can you imagine for a moment that you would delight in the capture of a deer with your bare hands under the speed you could develop by running or by surprising the deer and pouncing upon it, then sinking your “fangs” into it and dispatching it by a fatal bite to its jugular vein, heart or other organ? Would you relish a bloody face and body while you feasted upon flesh, offal, bones, blood and organs? Would this delight your palate, or does the very idea repulse you?

Can you imagine gathering the miniscule seeds of grass for hours on end for sufficient calories to meet your bodily needs? And then more hours of laborious chewing a few hard grains at a time to ensalivate and comminute them preparatory to digestion?

Can you imagine digging tubers and eating them as tuber eaters do? Unwashed—with soil and tuber too. With your snout, you’d unearth the tubers and quickly dispatch them, digesting them readily with copious quantities of the four to six starch-splitting enzymes that true starch eaters have. Do you relish this, or does the very idea repulse you?

Do you think you’d relish weed eating? Do you think you could get your requirements from these precursors to today’s vegetables?

Or would you warm to the idea of taking ripened bananas directly from the stalk? Of plucking ripe figs and mouthing them in the tree’s shade? Of breaking open luscious melons and eating their sweet succulent nectar?

Just think what appeals to you most and what is most repulsive to you. You can readily determine, from your own feelings, our psychological disposition toward improper and proper foods when you consider them and your relationship to them in a totally natural context.

If you see a squirrel, is it your natural disposition to snatch and eat it, or to be kind to it? Do you have the heart to try and kill the charming little creature? Does anyone who has yet within him/herself a streak of humanity have the nerve to do that?

The world has become very much perverted. People actually do relish the sight of packages of beefsteak, chicken legs and breasts and other prepared and embalmed carrion.

Despite these perversions, it is the rare person that does not look with favor upon watermelons, cantaloupes, pineapples, strawberries and other fruits. Despite their eating perversions, most peoples’ palates are easily won back to fruits by taking them through a fast and then realimenting them on fruit fare. Fruits are not only our best foods, they are our only biologically-mandated foods.
 

2. Some Charges Made Against Fruits And Fruit Eaters

Most Hygienists/Life Scientists may be called timid fruitarian idealists. They are all too willing to admit, even proclaim, that we are naturally frugivores and that our ancestors lived either on nearly all or completely fruitarian diets. “A fruit meal is the ideal,” they espouse. Yet most of these same people are unwilling to try subsisting on fruits! Some Hygienists think we must supplement the fruit diet with some cheese, others think we must have some vegetables. Still others think fruits are great but should be supplemented with nuts (which are also fruits botanically).

The “consensus” diet that we have advocated consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

Nevertheless many Hygienists eat seeds, nuts, sprouts, green leaves, stalks, stems, tubers and grains almost to the exclusion of fruits! These peoples fruit intake largely consists of avocados, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash.

When asked why they do not eat more fruit despite giving lip service to fruit as the ideal, most Hygienists will tell you that although fruit may be alright for short periods of time as a “cleansing” or “elimination” diet, it is not to be taken except as a luxury. These are the charges made against fruits:

    a.    Fruits are protein poor;

    b.    Fruits have too many free acids;

    c.    Those who subsist on fruits become neurotics;

    d.    Fruits are too poor in iron and anemia results if only fruits are eaten;

    e.    Those who eat only fruits will suffer nutritional imbalances and deficiencies;

    f.    Fruit eaters cannot maintain weight and are too thin;

    g.    Fruit eaters become over-alkaline and often suffer alkalosis; and

    h.    Fruits are deficient in calcium as well as protein and results in stunted growth in youngsters.

Taken together, these statements sound like quite an indictment. Yet, almost the same charges were made by the medical profession against both fruits and vegetables 150 years ago. Fruit eating was then said to result in fevers, biliousness and other maladies. Fruit was treated as a dessert or as a decorative accessory.

Of course this indictment has never been heard by tribes and peoples who subsist almost totally on bananas, custardy coconuts (before its fats and fibers form), dates, figs and similar fruits. Orangutans of the East Indies live exclusively on fruit and are the most intelligent and human-like of our primate relatives.

How can one defend the concept of fruit as our natural food? Is this stance hypocritical? Is there substance to the aforementioned charges? Is fruit really our natural food after all? Is it possible that it no longer supplies our needs? Has the human constitution changed? Here we have many questions arise that need answering.
 

2.1 “Fruits Are Protein-Poor”

The charge is made that fruits are protein poor. It is true that if you compare a banana in the dry state with its 5% protein content to a soy bean in the dry state with 35% protein, the banana is, indeed, protein poor. But the protein content of any food has relevance only to our need of it as an item of diet. So we must understand our need for protein relative to our diet.

A growing human baby gets a mono diet of its mother’s milk for many months before it touches any other food. Mother’s milk for her rapidly developing infant contains only 1.1% protein. Surely no one can argue that a grown person can require more protein than a growing child relative to its weight or as a percentage of its diet. If anything, the grownup who has attained full development requires less protein than a nursing tot. A grown person might get adequate protein on as little as half a percent of his or her dietary content.

The RDA for protein is said to be 70 grams daily for an average man of 150 pounds. This figure is well over twice the actual human need. In fact, it is about three times the actual need as established by tests by Dr. Chittenden of Yale and Dr. Hinhede in Denmark and many others. Further, there are groups of physically-robust people in the Caribbean who thrive on an average intake of about 15 grams of protein daily. (They eat cassava or manioc.) Keeping in mind that the body can obtain up to 70% of its protein needs by recycling its proteinaceous wastes, it becomes somewhat evident that protein needs in humans have been overblown. The meat, dairy, poultry and fish industries have made their mark, even on those who reject animal products as items of food.

Can we continue to say that fruits are protein poor? In view that, if protein is one per cent of our diet, our protein needs are amply met, then fruits are protein adequate! When we’ve eaten some 2,250 calories worth of almost any fruit except apples, we’ve also ingested some 25 to 40 grams of protein. Inasmuch as most fruits do contain all the essential amino acids, I would adjudge that fruits meet human needs for protein amply.

History bears out beyond refutation that humans have been fruit eaters during their entire sojourn on earth excepting a period beginning during the ice ages. Even then, a preponderance of our ancestors still ate fruits. Most migrated south to warmer climes and continued to eat fruits. Grain eating is not more than 10,000 years old. Meat eating, though much older than that, was mostly confined to northerly peoples. Almost all mythology is built around trees and climatic factors that affected trees. Only relatively recent mythologies connect humans to grain culture and animal husbandry.
 

2.2 “Fruits Have Too Many Free Acids”

The charge that fruits have too many free acids is false and rather pointless. Fruits have no free acid. All are organic. Vinegar, cheese and fermented milk are substances with free acids, namely acetic and lactic acids.

Humans are primarily sweet fruit eaters. Yet even grapefruits, plums, sour cherries, sour grapes, lemons, limes and other acidic fare have no free acids.

The human body metabolizes most acids in fruits very well. Benzoic acid, tannic acid, oxalic acid and prussic acid, none of which are free acids and all of which are rare in fruits, are among those acids that give humans metabolic problems. Humans handle citric, tartaric and malic acids very well. These are the primary fruit acids: Perhaps the occasions when fruit acids give problems occur when acid fruits such as lemons, strawberries, pineapples or grapefruit are eaten along with sweet fruit such as bananas, dates, figs, raisins, persimmons or non-fruit fare.
 

2.3 Fruits Are Too Poor in Iron and Cause Anemia

The charge that fruits are too poor in iron and cause anemia is likewise without foundation. The body can recycle up to about 95% of its iron supply and needs very little from the outside. It is said that our RDA of iron is some 10 milligrams daily. This, like other RDA’s, is some two to three times too high. Nevertheless, oranges sufficient to meet our caloric needs supply about twenty milligrams of iron daily. In fact, if you compared all the fruits and their iron content, you’d find every one meeting the RDA for iron with surfeits. A food that might be said to be deficient in iron by these RDA’s is, of all things, a mother’s milk!

Should fruits be charged as being Vitamin B-12 poor, then the same can be said of all foods, even the foods that animals eat. Only meats and certain kinds of algae have what is termed sufficient Vitamin B-12. But if animal fare such as grasses, leaves, grains, herbs and fruits do not furnish animals with vitamin B-12, how do their organs come to be so rich in it? Why are the organs of fruit-eating primates rich in it? How is it that fruitarian societies are not anemic from lack of Vitamin B-12? The truth is that humans, like all other animals, obtain ample supplies of Vitamin B-12 from bacterial production in their intestines. Even garlic eaters usually do not destroy enough of their symbiotic bacterial flora to deny themselves of an adequate supply of Vitamin B-12.

So I adjudge the charge that fruit eaters are anemic to be without any substantive evidence whatsoever.
 

2.4 Those Who Eat Only Fruits Suffer Nutritional Imbalance and Deficiencies

The charge that fruit eaters will suffer nutritional imbalances and deficiencies likewise finds no basis in fact. Fruits, eaten judiciously according to their seasons, furnish us with every nutrient factor, known and unknown, in plenteousness. Those ancient Greeks whom we admire so much for their statuesque bodies, were fruit eaters. Most ate heavily of apples, dates, oranges, olives, figs and grapes. The Greek and Roman gods are ascriptions born of reverence for fruit trees and food-bearing plants.
 

2.5 Fruit Eaters Cannot Maintain Weight and Are Too Thin

The charge that fruit eaters are too thin is not borne out by even the simplest investigation. Personally, I’ve gone down into the 120-pound range and came back to the 150-pound range with excellent muscular development, on a diet almost entirely of fruits. My wife has to watch her intake of heavy-calorie fruit foods, especially nuts, lest she become too heavy. As previously pointed out, the Greeks thrived on fruitarian diets. Pythagoras, one of the giants of Grecian literature, philosophy and mathematics, was a fruitarian and had a whole school of followers who, likewise, were fruitarians. Actually, the teachings of Pythagoras very much parallel the teachings of Gautama Buddha, whose teachings Pythagoras was conversant with. Buddha was, in essence, a tree worshipper as were fruitarian societies. Bacchus is portrayed as heavily overweight and this is attributed to fig gluttony.
 

2.6 Fruit Eaters Become Over-Alkaline and Suffer Alkalosis

The charge that fruit eaters are over alkaline and often suffer alkalosis is, likewise, baseless. We humans can harmlessly excrete excess alkaline substances but, if we get excess acid-forming substances as from meats, animal products, cereal foods, etc., we really have problems. The body must rob its bones, teeth and other alkaline structures for the alkalis, mostly calcium, necessary to neutralize the acids generated from acid-forming foods. The maker of this “alkalosis” charge simply ignored physiology. It ill becomes vegetarians or fruitarians to make such a charge.
 

2.7 Fruits Are Deficient in Calcium as Well as Protein and Results in Stunted Growth in Youngsters

Fruits are said to be deficient in calcium. To investigate this I made charts of a number of fruits and their composition. Our fuel needs can be met amply by fruits. Calcium and a plethora of other nutrients are a component of every gram of fruit food. When we have eaten sufficient fruit to supply our caloric needs, say about 2,250 calories, how much of our RDA for calcium have we met? The RDA is set at 800 milligrams per day for a 150-pound man. This, like other RDA’s, is some two to four times too high. Nevertheless, let’s look at some fruit foods and their calcium content when 2,250 calories worth have been consumed.

Oranges, a widely-consumed fruit, have about 2,050 milligrams of calcium, 2 1/2 times the RDA. Apples have 315 mg. Apricots have 782 mg. Cantaloupes have 1,078 mg. Figs have 1,130 mg. Bananas have 224 mg. and banana-eating societies have excellent bone formation by all standards. Grapes have 440 mg., dates have 530 mg., mangos 370 mg., pineapples 785 mg., watermelon 640 mg. and so on down the line. Obviously fruits supply us amply with our calcium needs. The saying that fruit eaters suffer stunted growth does not withstand serious inquiry. As previously noted, statuesque Greeks were fruit eaters.
 

2.8 Allergies to fruits

Fruits have fallen into disrepute with many people for the reason that they find that they suffer with discomfort after eating them. It was Dr. Dewey who said that fruits demoralize digestion. He was especially opposed to eating apples. This trouble with fruits grows out of the practice of wrongly combining them. Strawberries and melons are commonly singled out as fruits that “I am allergic to,” and these foods are wholesome and toothsome. If taken alone as in the case of melons, or properly combined as in the case of strawberries, they almost never cause any trouble. Skin rashes and intestinal disturbances that often follow the eatings of fruit or that follow a particular fruit may, almost always, be traced to wrong combining. In the few cases where this is not so, a correction of the way of life, so that normal digestive power is reestablished, soon enables the individual to eat fruit. I do not think that there is anyone who cannot eat freely of fruits if due care is taken in combining them.
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