I started off by becoming a vegetarian in November 2010 when I started my diet, then vegan in January & I'm finally a fully fledged fruitarian...lovin' every minute of it & my energy levels have never been so high!
I'd love to make a few close friends on here & I'm also on Facebook, so please feel free to ask for my address.
Hi Sally Ann!
I'm not a fruitarian, but I am a vegan and I'm interested in how bein a fruitarian works in practice. Why did you decide to take the leap from veganism to fruitarianism (if that's a word)?
Ive decided to start only fruits tomorrow. Ive been vegen for about 4 months not and I ready to try all fruit because I love the way they make me feel. I do believe that this will be extremely difficult but I am ready for the challenge.
If anyone is interested in fruitarianism, or any other low fat raw vegan diets, please read the 80/10/10 diet! It will most definitely change your views on food and fitness! When eating a high fruit diet I don't adivse limiting your amount of fresh fruits, eat as much as you can/care for!
I read and tried 80/10/10, but for me a better name for it would be "the diarrhea diet."
One flaw I found in the diet's logic was the focus on foods that aren't a common component of a natural diet - that is on un-naturally sweet ones. All "fruitarian" animals (and chimpanzees are nearest genetic relatives, specifically) eat far more unripe and not-sweet fruit and vegetation than the book's recipes and meal plans reflected. Modern, human-cultivated fruits are much higher in sugar and much lower in fiber than any chimp or other fruitarian animal would have access to.
Also the author mentions non-grass vegetables and leafy greens, but doesn't include a very high proportion in the recipes. Definitely not the proportion that would make up the natural primate diet, the author claims to be trying to emulate. Also, in the wild, fruits, nuts and succulent vegetation are in high-demand, so the competition insures that there's not much of the best-tasting stuff to go around, and it gets eaten long before peak ripeness/sugar-content is reached. But people aren't going to be very tempted by recipes that call for a diet of mostly leaves and a much smaller amount of unripe fruit and small but significant amounts of live insects.
The proportion of non-sweet to sweet fruits/vegetation would be much, much higher than any of the recipes in the book, but a smoothie of 70% vegetables like celery, rhubarb, kale and cabbage and 20% unsweet fruit like unripe tomatoes and green bananas and 10% insects, spiders, worms, and their eggs doesn't sound very appealing.
Even zoos have had to reformute their diets for fruit/veggie eaters, because humans continue to breed more and more sugar into and the fiber out of our produce.
Also, fruitarian primates eat a LOT of insects with their produce, both incidentally (no presticides, so the fruit and veggies contain a lot of insects) but they also intentionally seek out insects through grooming and hunting and foraging specifically insects. Insects tend to be excellent sources of calcium and protein.
I think the premise is interesting, but I think in practice, it doesn't work very well with the types of fruits/veggies that humans find most attractive. Even among fruitarian apes, high-sugar fruits would be the simian equivalent to junk food - too calorically dense.
If you can increase the fiber and decrease the sugar, and you're making sure to get enough calcium and protein, and making sure to get in a great deal of variety, I think it can work. Unfortunately, unless you happen to have a broader understanding of nutrition and natural primate diets, I think the book oversimplifies to the point it can be misleading.
This post is from April, but if you are still around.. I will be delighted on joining you and others. I will begin on Thursday and will eat only fruits and nuts..This will be my new and only food staples. Plus drinking water. I AM READY!!!
There are some vegan body builders that swear by a low fat, high raw diet which ends up being a very fruit/veggie focused diet. Also, the definition of fruit used is the scientific definition so it is very focused on fruits and veggies. I'd definitely say research as much as possible because you do need to take a vitamin B12 supplement if it is something you plan to follow long term.
I personally am not really a fan of high raw diets and really think a lot of claims put out there by proponents are not the most scientific. There are a lot of claims made with zero evidence to back them up. Eating raw foods is good, eating fruits and veggies is good but cooked foods aren't poison as some suggest.
Again there are many people who enjoy a high raw diet and do well on it but its definitely not for everyone.
With all the discussion about raw foods, folks might find this article about how fire may have shaped human evolution interesting. The author, a professor at Western Washington University, attributes a lot of our characteristics--small mouths, puny dentition, big brains, and shorter guts--to millions of years of eating cooked food.
I don't know if he's on the right track about a "fire ecology," but it's hard to argue that we just aren't constructed to eat the same diet as other current primates. We don't have the massive jaw musculature, big teeth, and long intestinal tracts it takes to eat an exclusively raw diet. And as Kaplods mentioned, even the apes in question don't eat exclusively raw fruits and vegetables.
Not to rain on anyone's parade here and if folks want to try the raw thing, that's their choice. I'm just personally dubious that it's a necessary or good thing for us, given our anatomy and physiology.
From what I've read, frutarians don't model themselves after current primates. Now some paleo minded vegans do model themselves after frutarians though. As a species, we are quite adaptable and as I said some people do well on a high raw, fruit focused diet. Most raw people I know personally aren't 100% raw but put themselves between 80% to 90%. I'm sure there are some people who eat only raw foods though.
This diet sounds scary to me! I would consider doing something like this for a short while as a cleanse/fast, but not for the long haul.
But, what works for one doesn't work for everyone! This I know for sure. For example, my diet is at least 75% carbs (mostly healthy complex ones, with the occasional chip or cookie), and that works for me for both health and weight loss.
Some people claim that if they ate as many carbs as I eat, they would gain a lot of weight. So I know that everyone is different.
I grow all my own fruit, except for bananas and kiwis. But I sure would not want to eat it full time to the exclusion of meat and veggies and grains.
I would soon be malnourished.
But eating it for just a month might be OK. But I'm not going to try it. I would get too weak and hungry to do all my chores within a few days.
And without fat in my diet, my nerves would start to get inflamed, and I would get aches and pains all over.
And then there is the kefir I drink almost every day. And my almonds to prevent acid indigestion... How would I keep my intestines healthy? Geez.... I'd be anemic and a physical wreck in no time.
Jolina - fruitarians generally do eat some nuts and a lot of things we call veggies are actually a fruit. Zucchini and tomatoes for instance. As I said, there are some serious athletes that model themselves after a high fruit diet but again, its not for everyone.
I'm not advocating it myself as I really don't think it is for me. It is a very small subset of vegetarianism though and this is the vegetarian forum so it seems up for discussion.
Any other Fruitarians here?
When eating a high fruit diet I don't adivse limiting your amount of fresh fruits, eat as much as you can/care for!
