Raw Food Explained: Life Science
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Article #1: Are We Vegetarians Or Fruitarians?
At this point in our study of the character of our natural dietary, I feel it is important to address this question: are we vegetarians or fruitarians? The true answer to this question is extremely important. Nothing could possibly contribute more to your success as a health practitioner than the mastery of the knowledge of our dietary character.
There are about twenty million people in this country who call themselves “vegetarians.” Most vegetarians fuel their bodies with what is called vegetarian fare. That is, they fancy themselves as a class of herbivores or plant eaters. We Life Scientists contend that we are not ruminants or herbivores.
Why are we delving into such a narrow-ranged inquiry? There are many amongst us, even those who call themselves Hygienists or Life Scientists, who feel that vegetable fare is proper for humans. If I felt that were true, I would not be pursuing this inquiry. Of course, that does not mean, ipso facto, that I’m right. I will nevertheless 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.
In our life practice and those we endeavor to instill in others, we must strive for dietetic perfection. The best diet, as a component of a well-rounded health regime, will yield the greatest measure of health. From that abundant health springs the greatest joys in life. That which is good is also beautiful. That which is wholesome makes us wonderful for ourselves, for others and for society. An ideal diet is the basis for the best possible level of health. Thus this inquiry is conducted for the purpose of ascertaining what constitutes an ideal diet.
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. Turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, fresh sweet corn, sprouted legumes and fresh sweet peas (where starch has not set) would be some of the near exceptions.
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.
I deeply believe that we can add certain vegetables to our diet in small quantities with some benefit, most notably lettuce and celery. Their wealth of vitamins and mineral salts as well as their high quality protein amply supplement and insure adequacy of a fruitarian diet. Our bodies handle small amounts of such vegetable fare rather efficiently and without protest. In conjunction with a vegetable meal certain fruits can also be added, especially bell peppers, tomatoes and avocados. Secondarily we can add nuts on occasion or seeds such as pumpkin, sesame id sunflower. These seeds have the same dietetic character as nuts even though humans probably never ate them in nature.
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.
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.
While the condition and quality of fruits available in our marketplaces are lamentable, the same goes for everything else sold as foods! So we are still better off with fruits. Some fine quality fruits can be obtained and we should concentrate upon those. Dried fruits have considerable goodness too. We should complement our fruit meals with some dried fruits, especially if we’re in need of high caloric intake.
I believe the points made herein support overwhelmingly that we are fruitarians. Thus I rest my case.
THE CARNIVORA | THE OMNIVORA | THE HERBIVORA | THE ANTHROPOID APES | MAN |
Zonary placenta | Placenta non-acciduate | Placenta non-deciduate | Discoidal placenta | Discoidal placenta |
Four Footed | Four Footed | Four footed | Two hands and two feet | Two hands and two feet |
Have claws | Have hoofs | Have hoofs (cloven) | Flat nails | Flat nails |
Go on all fours | Go on all fours | Go on all fours | Walks upright | Walks upright |
Have tails | Have tails | Have tails | Without tails | Without tails |
Eyes look sideways | Eyes look sideways | Eyes look sideways | Eyes look forward | Eyes look forward |
Skin without pores | Skin with pores | Skin with pores (save with pachyderms as the elephant | Millions of pores | Millions of pores |
Slightly developed incisor teeth | Very well-developed incisor teeth | Well-developed incisor teeth | Well-developed incisor teeth | |
Pointed molar teeth | Molar teeth in folds | Blunt molar teeth | Blunt molar teeth | |
*Dental formula 5 to 8.1.6.1.5 to 8 5 to 8.1.6.1.5 to 8 |
Dental formula 8.1.2 to 3.1.8 8.1.2 to 3.1.8 |
Dental formula 6.0.0.0.6 6.1.6.1.6 |
Dental formula 5.1.4.1.5. 5.1.4.1.5. |
Dental formula 5.1.4.1.5 5.1.4.1.5 |
Small salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands |
Acid reaction of saliva and urine | Saliva and urine acid | Alkaline reaction, saliva and urine | Alkaline reaction, saliva and urine | Alkaline reaction of saliva and urine |
Rasping tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue |
Teats on abdomen | Teats on abdomen | Teats on abdomen | Miammary glands on breast | Mammary glands on breast |
Stomach simple and roundish | Stomach simple and roundish large cul-de-sac | A stomach in three compartments (in camel and some ruminents four) | Stomach with duodenum (as second stomach) | Stomach with duodenum (as second stomach) |
Intestinal canal 3 times length of the body | Intestinal canal 10 times length of the body | Length of intestinal canal varies according to species, but is usually 10 times longer than body | Intestinal canal 12 times length of the body | Intestinal canal 12 times length-of the body |
Colon Smooth | Intestinal canal smooth and convoluted | Intestinal canal smooth and convoluted | Colon convoluted | Colon convoluted |
Lives on flesh | Lives on flesh, carrion and plants | Lives on grass, herbs and plants | Lives on fruit and nuts | Lives on fruit and nuts |
*The figures in the center represent the number of incisors upon each side
- 1. Prologue
- 2. Necessity Of Different Approaches To Nutritional Science
- 3. Understanding The Role Of Foods In Nutrition
- 4. Edibility Of Foods
- 5. Other Food Qualities
- 6. Summary Of Criteria Relative To Goodness
- 7. Ratings Of Generally Available Foods
- 8. Questions About The Lesson
- Article #1: Are We Vegetarians Or Fruitarians?
- Article #2: Research Yields Bombshell Of A Surprise!
- Article #3: Are We Meat Eaters?
- Article #4: Are We Milk Drinkers?
- Article #5: Are We Grain Eeaters?
Raw Food Explained: Life Science
Today only $37 (discounted from $197)