11. Questions & Answers

What are our real protein needs and how can we possibly get these from fruits? Fruits aren't protein foods.

Tests conducted by Professor Chittenden of Yale and others indicate that an average man requires about 25 grams of protein daily. There are people in some South Pacific Islands and elsewhere that live primarily on starch foods, especially cassavas. Their diet is low in protein—only about 15 grams daily. Yet these people are reported to be in excellent health. The body has the capability to recycle most of its protein wastes. Cassava, the main starch food eaten by these South Pacific people, has only about 1/5th of 1% protein, about one sixth of that of bananas. Moreover, these people cook their cassava. They are said to eat six to ten pounds of this food daily.
Our real protein needs are about 25 grams daily. The average fruit contains 1% protein. We should eat 2,500 grams of fruits daily, about five and a half pounds with water content. For an average man, this is not a tremendous amount of food. The average American consumes about seven pounds of food daily and ingests 94 grams of protein. Moreover, this diet is so heavy in fat that about 44% of America's caloric intake is derived from that source.
True, fruits aren't protein foods. But neither are we protein eaters as are carnivores. But look at those who do eat protein foods such as meats, cheese, etc. They are a diseased lot. In fact, most Americans are sick and the fact that they daily take in about four times their protein requirements is a contributing factor.
Fruits, we repeat, furnish us amply with our protein needs in an easily used form. This is particularly true if you include avocados and/or nuts, both of which are technically fruits.

You've never had one good word to say about drugs. In fact, you've knocked them so much and carried the definition so far as to make almost everyone a drug addict of one kind or another. If they were so harmful, surely we'd all be long since dead.

Humans are a hardy lot. They represent an aggregation of some hundred trillion cells with thousands of guardian angels. The impulse to life is great. We have a tremendous capacity for eliminating poisons. Despite this, most of us are diseased. How many assaults of food poisoning from condiments and cooked foods can we withstand? Most Americans have 50,000 to 70,000 bouts of leucocytosis before they die from it in the form of some degenerative disease, usually cancer or cardiovascular problems. We cut our life potential in half. If drugs had any value in the organism they would be foods, not drugs. Drugs are one and all poisonous regardless of their source. Almost every American is hooked on drugs of some kind.

Is there a science of correct feeding? It seems that the term nutrition covers much more than correct feeding.

There are two technical words that have to do with feeding, whereas nutrition covers all processes of supply and elimination and everything that effects those processes. Orthotrophy means correct feeding. Ortho means correct and trophy means to feed. Aristophagy means best eating. In the sense that correct feeding is the best eating, both words mean the same.

Don't certain types of foods help you get well? Juices and fruits help you clean out. Garlic is well known to help high blood pressure cases. Aloes helps heal wounds and ulcers.

Can you imagine a fruit or a fruit juice with an inborn intelligence and will such that, when consumed, instead of being digested, it goes into the blood stream and promptly starts rounding up toxic materials and putting them out of the body? Let's emphasize again and again that foods do not act in the body, that all the action is from the organism. Chemical actions may occur from chemicals in ingesta, yes, but any actions other than body actions are toxic actions.
However, fruits and juices are so easily digested and used and introduce so little food debris into our bodies that they do leave the body with extra energy to perform its duties. When freed of the burdens eliminating toxins from polluting foods and digesting unsuitable foods, the body devotes itself to extraordinary cleansing with the extra energies available.
Garlic does not help high blood pressure. In the presence of allicin and mustard oil, two of the toxic substances in garlic, the organism dilates its blood vessels to more quickly circulate blood and expel these toxins. The heart beats faster and leucocytosis occurs, sure signs of the toxicity of allicin and mustard oil. These substances freely permeate all body cells and tissues. They are not digested and used but excreted through the kidneys, bowels, skin and lungs.
After expulsion the blood pressure will be just as high as before if the same regime that caused it remains in effect. The garlic has helped nothing. Rather, it has complicated an already diseased situation. The drug effects of garlic are mistaken for beneficial effects. The problem is not solved by garlic, and high blood pressure is not the problem. Rather, it is but a symptom of the problem. The problem remained even though the symptom was lessened or suppressed.
Aloes applied to ulcers and wounds do not heal them. The toxic material in aloes, aloin, is absorbed by the body when applied to the skin and to open sores (which the body uses as an ejection site for toxic wastes and ingesta). When the poisons begin coming in from the outside the body closes the wound promptly, shutting down eliminative operations at the site. While the poisonous aloes have been the occasion for the body closing the wound, they have not healed the wound but were a source of a poisonous alkaloid. The body does the healing.

I read recently that an 80-pound chimpanzee was so strong that two handlers could not subdue it: Are they so strong? What kind of super foods do they eat?

Chimpanzees in nature have the strength to do acrobatic feats and handle their weight with such ease and facility as to put humans to shame. A four hundred-pound gorilla has about thirty times the strength of a 180 pound man. This attests not so much to the strength of these animals as to the degeneration and weakness of humans. In nature we were equally strong. We can achieve this strength again if we adopt our natural diet and practices akin to those that we developed in our natural habitat.
A substantial part of the diets of chimpanzees and gorillas consists of fruits. This is fruit-power for you.

Will an all-fruit diet cause nervous breakdowns and nervous problems as I've so often heard?

You will find no evidence of this among fruitarian societies or among fruitarian animals. Diets that are sufficient in the raw materials we require are the basis of health. They cause neither health nor ill health. Nervous breakdowns can come from nutrient inadequacy and from stressful situations, especially those that constantly drain the organism of nervous energy. In this society, millions have nervous breakdowns. We have only a few thousand fruitarians and they are faring well rather than poorly.

What is wrong with eating starchy foods? Doesn't cooking change the starch to usable sugars?

We actually use very little of the starch components in starchy foods, as most of the starch is not penetrated by our digestive amylases and thus is not broken down. The starch that is available cannot be digested to a great extent by humans because they quickly exhaust their limited supply of salivary amylase or ptyalin. Thus we fail as starch eaters.
Cooked starches are dextrinized, and more of the fuel values are available to us, yet, on the other hand, much of the food components are degenerated by heat and are, therefore, toxic in the system.

We're not meat eaters, then why do we secrete hydrochloric acid and pepsin?

Proteins from whatever source (meat or nuts, for example) require the enzyme pepsin and an acid medium in which to be digested. We need only small amounts of protein and we digest it with an efficiency ratio of only about one to two. Animals that live on protein diets have hydrochloric acid solutions so strong that unchewed flesh is readily digested. A tiger's stomach secretes a hydrochloric acid solution some 1,100% more concentrated than that in humans. Again, proteins form but a small part of the diet of humans in nature, whereas tigers eat heavily of proteins in the meat, bone and offal of their prey.

How do you, as a fruitarian, manage to control your hunger? Fruit meals leave me mostly unsatisfied. Further, I feel empty and ravenously hungry within an hour or two after eating fruits. I have to eat five or six times a day if I'm on fruits just to keep my hunger under control. If I eat some nuts or an avocado right after my fruits I feel satisfied, though.

I've eaten a diet of 80% to 90% fruit for many years now. I rarely eat my first meal of the day before noon and I rarely eat more than two fruit meals in a day. Further, I eat about three or four meals weekly with some avocado or perhaps nuts and a hearty salad. I find my desire for vegetables and nuts waning and my desire for fruits increasing with the years. I feel very comfortable after fruit meals whereas sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable after vegetable meals. I sleep more and feel more sluggish when I've had a nut and vegetable meal. I don't feel as alive, alert and zippy on mornings after vegetable and nut or avocado meals.
On occasion I have eaten a salad and nut meal at noon. As a result I usually missed the evening meal because even the best foods repulsed me—I had no hunger. It's as if my body closed down digestive operations. That is how "satisfying" vegetables and nuts are to me.
The fact that most people mistake irritation and vital symptoms of recovery for hunger does not mean hunger exists. An emptiness in the stomach means that the food has been passed from it. That is not hunger. Hunger is felt in the mouth and throat just as thirst is. It is not unpleasant and it urges us to eat just as thirst urges us to drink.
What we commonly mistake for hunger that drives us to eat are pathological symptoms not unlike the "withdrawal" symptoms of tobacco, coffee, alcohol, condiments and other drug addictions that drive us to go back for another fix. When the body is without its fix for a while, it begins clean-up operations. These usually involve unpleasant symptoms that drive us to get another fix. Another fix engages the body in activities that depress vital functions, especially eliminative functions. Thus we are satisfied for a while, in fact, quite a while in the case of foods that are not of our adaptation.
The fact that fruits are so easily digested and used permits the body to quickly reassert its vitality and devote itself to the cleansing and eliminative processes. The symptoms are not pleasant as the body restores itself from the effects of a previously unsuitable diet. We thus try to smother those symptoms with another meal. Those symptoms do not constitute hunger. Eating suppresses them in the same way that a cup of coffee suppresses the hangover of previous coffee-drinking.
As a mostly fruitarian I rarely experience any demand for food before noon and I'm satisfied until the evening meal. Sometimes I miss the noon or evening meal and I'm not particularly uncomfortable from the lack of food. I think most of this so-called hunger is psychological and pathological in nature.

You have said that the Vilcabambians of Peru get along well at hard labor on 1,300 to 1,400 calories daily. It's well known that hard working men need 3,000 calories and more a day. How can that few calories support vigorous work which these people are supposed to do?

Let us think about this. The world's healthiest and longest lived people eat a primarily carbohydrate diet. They eat very little protein foods in the form of legumes and very little oily foods in the form of legumes and nuts—in fact they consume almost no oily foods. Contrast this with Americans, especially laboring men, who take in 40% or more of their calories as fats and oils and a substantial part of the remainder in protein foods, especially meats, eggs and cheeses. Obviously the human organism isn't very efficient in dealing with these foods, as the studies indicate.
Further, we must recognize that the average American is a walking pathological museum, requiring far more energy just to deal with the pathology than healthy people. Further, impaired organisms do not operate efficiently, whereas healthy people operate efficiently and make full use of their foods.

How can you build muscle on a total fruit diet?

The average man uses about 75 grams of protein daily. Of this he needs only about 25 grams from the diet. The remaining 50 grams is obtained by recycling wastes. Fruit amply furnishes the 25 grams needed from outside sources daily. The healthier an organism becomes, the better use it can make of its nutrient supply. It is a myth and a delusion that we need more protein than normal to build muscles. It's like saying that we need more bricks to build a house than the plans call for. Once the structure has been built, replacement and additional bricks are needed but little.

How can we get vitamin B-12 from fruits? Vegetarians are warned about the lack of vitamin B-12 in vegetables and certainly fruits have none of this vitamin.

There's no vitamin B-12 in grass either, yet cattle have plenty of vitamin B-12. Almost no food in nature has vitamin B-12 in it.
We get our vitamin B-12 needs the same as other creatures in nature. We were not cheated in this regard. We do not have to eat animal products as the meat and dairy industries urge us to do. The bacteria of our intestines create vitamin B-12 which we absorb just as with other animals.
Almost all cases of anemia and B-12 deficiency occur in meat-eaters, not in vegetarians, which, if it happens, is given publicity like you wouldn't believe.

Shouldn't we eat locally-grown fruits for best nutrition? Animals in nature must live on locally-grown fruits and, as you have said, they're very healthy.

Here in Texas that would be great advice and we can do it. Our forefathers did that to a great extent on self-sufficient farms. But, as fruitarians, this is not presently possible. We must get our fruits from subtropical sources during the winter season. Of course we can develop and preserve our fruits, especially by drying and secondarily by freezing.
But fruits do not necessarily make us less healthy if they have been grown in other areas. Tropical bananas properly grown furnish no less nutritive benefits if eaten 2,000 miles away from their growing area as if consumed in that area. Nutritive adequacy is the need. Local produce may and may not be nutritively adequate. A good mix of foods from various soils is more likely to give us adequacy.

Aren't whole wheat products good to eat? The first Hygienists advocated whole wheat bread and other products. Graham advocated it so strongly that whole wheat flour came to be known as Graham flour. Why has that changed with Life Science?

By the end of the nineteenth century Hygienists had already begun to reject wheat as an unwholesome food no matter how eaten. Dr. Densmore and others began advocating an all-fruit diet with some nuts. Humans can't eat wheat raw and, even if cooked, the gluten protein component is almost wholly indigestible.