I bought this old book called "Nature the Healer" by John Richter for $.25 at a thrift store. I think it has been reprinted and is available today but this looks like the first edition from 1936.

Anyway, regarding the all fruit diet, he says that to go all from a SAD diet to an all fruitarian diet immediatly will drive one "insane".

FRUITS AND FRUIT DIET

Q. Can man live on fruit alone?

A. I am going to give you my candid opinion. A beginner on natural foods who tries at once to live on fruits is likely to go insane before long. Let him, rather, start on fruits in the morning, herbs at noon, and roots at night, and live in that way until his body is rebuilt. Thoroughly strengthened with the strong tissue cells derived from vegetables, fruits and nuts, he will then be completely rebuilt. Man's mental and physical equipment has been so perverted by cooked-food eating that should he put it under a too sudden and severe strain, he would become mentally unbalanced, handicapped by a weak body as he is. First build a one hundred percent body. Then you may try the radical fruitarian diet if you wish.

Fruits alone have too little material for tissue building. Vegetables and roots contain these in adundance. Fruits are a wonderful food, but only for people who are perfectly clean, who have never been polluted by wrong eating; people who have never known anything about disease, being naturally normal and healthy, full of vigor and pep; people who are immune from any disease.

He recommends Epsom Salt baths to detox the skin. Two pounds of Epsom salts in a bathtub full of blood-warm water 100F.

"After you have been in the bath ten minutes, you will feel a kind of slime on your skin. Step out, and with a sponge of cold water, rub off this slime. Then get back into the water for another ten minutes. Rub off the slime as before, and continue in this manner until there appears to be no more slime. Three times, perhaps, and you will have cleaned it off fairly well."

Then he dips in cold water and goes to bed.

Anyone ever get slime from an Epsom salt bath?

[Fruits alone have too little material for tissue building.]

I think there is some truth to this. Most of the fruits that we eat are high in energy but low in protein and minerals. That may be ok for some but not for everyone, since we are all somewhat different in our needs and our body ability to extract and make use of what is available in our foods.

Plant structural parts: leaves, roots, stems tend to be higher in protein and minerals.

I think it is possible to do well on an all-fruit diet (provided B12 and D status are ok) but it would require heavy use of non-sweet fruits (summer squash especially) and a lot of calories, which would also require a lot of exercise to burn off.

I think this is true. When it comes to eating all fruit......I think there is DEFINITELY a big difference between:

a) I have been living/eating poorly all my life....and I'm thinking of switching to all fruit or;

b) I've been living/eating steadily healthier for a long time....and I want to eat/live lighter.

-The former is likely to have problems....while the latter finds themselves just DOING what is necessary for their healthy goals.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I don't think we will have an answer to this question until we have a track record from a significant portion of people who have lived on only fruit. This said, one cannot realy degrade from the state of health that is currently accepted as the norm, which means that any diet is at least as good as the going fare.

Intuitively I feel that all fruit would be perfect, accept that there will always be exceptions when one has a need for a particular nutrient. Like when a cat chews grass for example. I reckon that due to the diversity of individual lives, there will always be times when someone will need something which isn't available on hand in a fruit form.

lol...

This book is in Google Books!

Here is P.166 Fruits and Fruit Diet (at the bottom of the page)
[books.google.com]

The Epsom Salts page "Is not part of this preview" I don't know if that changes for other people looking at it. With some other Google Books I've read, I noticed that every time I clear my history and log back in, I can veiw different parts of the books IF (and only if) I scroll down before it loads the first part of the book and reaches it's preview limit. But I have the feeling that when individual pages are hidden, they are hidden by the author's discretion and that's what's happening here.
[books.google.com]

He has an awesome section on teeth regeneration with raw food (however only page 385 is visible to me right now and it's neighbors are hidden)
[books.google.com]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2008 04:38AM by Lillianswan.

Great find! I enjoyed previewing it on books.google.

I love fresh raw fruit and by far the majority of my diet consists of fruit. However, I also make sure to get sufficient leafy greens in my daily diet because I appreciate the nutrients in them. My goal is to support my body in health and wellness. A variety of fresh raw foods is the best way to do that IMO.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2008 10:28AM by EZ rider.

I prefer fruit usually, but my body tells me when it's craving greens. When I get the greens urge and indulge, it's wonderful. I have heard in other places that fruit is best for cleansing and greens are best for building--but once we've all blown through demolition and reconstruction, what is best? What do we really need?

We have heard here how switching to high fruit can make a mess of things for some people. It's also worth considering how some people are able to take on something like quantum eating--after a significant amount of time with raw. And then there are the long-term fruitarians who are thriving, as well...

I, personally, can't wait to read a book written by someone who was raised raw from birth. What foods do you gravitate toward if your tastes were never perverted? How much/often do you eat? How do you develop? There are so many THEORIES, but there's so much more information that will be unveiled within the raw community as the years go by, it's exciting. We're riding the crest of the unknown back into what was always known. =D