i am fooled by hybrid fruits but i want to ignore them because i read they are not as nutritious and may be toxic?!?!

i thought blood oranges was just a different kind of orange but its hybrid so that means man - made right?

it would be a good idea for us to list a bunch of common hybrid fruits and if we should avoid them or not to stay on a perfectly raw fruitarian diet .-.

just about all commercial fruits, even non-gm ones have been modified by man for hundreds or thousands of years. most fruits have more sugar, and less protein and fat, and probably less polyphenol content, as well as less vitamins and minerals due to sub-optimal growing environments than their ancestral counterparts. but what's a raw foodie to do... grow your own maybe?

hybridization happens in nature, it's cross breeding yes? it's not the same thing as genetic modification. don't worry so much.

posts like that ^^^ (Jono) make me totally just want to give up. what people say has a big impact on me not because im gullable but because i trust what everyone says.

im just hoping that the vitamins and minerals are still present in fruit and i guess i just have to believe! im not gonna quit, i love the way i feel just eating fruits its amazing!

confuzed Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> posts like that ^^^ (Jono) make me totally just
> want to give up. what people say has a big impact
> on me not because im gullable but because i trust
> what everyone says.

Well, it's definately true, and personally I don't think it's worth worrying about. People keep saying stuff like stay away from fruit X because selective breeding and cultivation have increased the sugar (or whatever) content compared to 100 years ago. But if it was 100 years ago, people could say the same thing. Many of the "original" (western world introduction original) fruits and veggies had been selectively bred for 100s if not 1000s of years before Spain or Britain or whoever invaded some country and brought back the seeds of plants they throught tasted good. The only way to avoid such foods would be to eat wild plants (although many have been subjected to accidently cross breeding over the years as well). The best chance would be things that people haven't tried to dimesticate, like lizards, racoons, beavers, eagles, bugs, lions, etc., but who wants to eat them any way.

> im just hoping that the vitamins and minerals are
> still present in fruit and i guess i just have to
> believe! im not gonna quit, i love the way i feel
> just eating fruits its amazing!

They sure have a lot more vitamins and minerals than pizza, candy bars, burgers, milk shakes and the rest. ;-)

Cheers,
Ian.

I don't think you have to avoid hybrids, hybridization occurs in nature, we are all hybrids ;-)
But I would avoid seedless stuff for ecological reasons, and because by growing seedless farmers become dependant on big companies ofr their seeds.
Instead of worrying about hybrids or not, you should more be worried about the mineral content of the soil where the fruits or greens were grown. And that counts for eating whatever, fruits or greens.
SGC

thats what i forgot to mention. the seed thing. thats interesting how fruits are losing their seeds or gaining some back.

but this is also confuzing as well. how many seeds to fruits usually have? for example i had like 6 or 7 oranges today lol and one of them only had 1 seed, some had a couple, some had many.

and i think one even didn't have any at all. the ones without seeds are they still good for us?

Oh yeah, they are still good, health wise, for us. But fruits that have been bred to not produce seeds are bad for farms. This prevents the farmers doing seed collection to plant new generations of crops and forces them to buy seeds and be at the mercy of corperations who might jack up the price of seeds or try to force small farmers out of business.

Ian.

> but this is also confuzing as well. how many seeds
> to fruits usually have? for example i had like 6
> or 7 oranges today lol and one of them only had 1
> seed, some had a couple, some had many.

Oranges are usually grown on grafted trees, and that's one of the reasons why they don't have seeds all the time.
A good friend of mine, rawfoodist in Spain, told me that he saw people who couldn't digest avocados grown on grafted trees, but having no problem from non grafted ones.

Just don't eat anything without seeds (watermelons, bananas) and you'll be fine. Certain types of dates (like Mejool) are way too sweet also (IMO).

because i didn't know blood oranges or pineapples were hybrid and the "no seeds" things is confusing.. should each section of the orange have a seed?

No need to avoid hybrids. But, if I can choose between seeded or seedless, I choose the first. I still have my nanas.

Gosia


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What about the seed itself, should we eat it too? I blend the whole thing without the skin in my smoothies (oranges, lemon, avocados)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2006 10:27AM by djatchi.

What about the LIST, people! We want the list on hybrid fruits and veggies! =)

list so far: lol

blood oranges

Almost all produce you can buy has been hydridized. To what extent, who can know. Even heirloom varieties are only guaranteed to be pure for 100 years or less. I don't see what the big deal is about hybridization. If you plant cantaloups and honeydews too close together, and you plant their seeds, the resulting melons will be a cantaloup/honeydew hybrid. Is this a bad thing? I don't see how. Just like if a african person has a baby with a caucasian person, the baby will be neither fully african or fully caucasian. Is this a bad thing? I don't see how.

Purity of species is one of those mental contructs we have that don't necessarily serve any useful purpose except to put dividers into our minds and hearts. This leads to dividing people, making them more separate from each other. Look at what happened to the eugenic movement in Germany during the second world war.

That being said, sometimes when people breed plants or animals for a specific trait, this leads to a set of other undesirable traits. This happens with purebred dogs, where certain dogs have health problems because they have been overbred. In this case, purity of species has been maintained, at the cost of diversity, and at the cost of robustness of the species.

This happens with plants also. People breed tomatoes for longer shelf life, with strong flesh and skin, and for better appearance. This can lead to loss of taste and texture in the final product. Same for seedlss watermelons. The seeds have been bred away, but at the cost of flavor and texture of the product.

Cloning is another technique that is used to reproduce a particular fruit or vegetable that has very desirable qualities. This has happened with certain potatoes and the regular banana. While this propogates a desirable products, it leads to a susceptibility to disease. If there is a disease that affects one of the clones, every single clone will problably be affected. If normal reproduction were allowed of the species, this would allow for more genetic diversity and perhaps a better chance to resist a particular plant disease or blight.

I agree with Bryan, everything you can buy in the store have been hybridized. Apples, carrots, zuccini, cucumbers, letuce, spinach, grapes, watermelon, peaches, grapefruit, oranges (all types), figs, olives, avocados, corn, oats, wheat, radishes, strawberries, blueberries, onions (green, red, yellow, shallow, leaks, all of them), horseradish, pares, basil, khale, brocilli, califlower, hemp, flax, dates, nuts (except wild jungle peanuts, but they might have been), spices/herbs (although you can pick things like wild sage), mangos, lemons, peppers, papyas, tomatos, garlic, rasberries, blackberries, gooseberries, gobo, grains, cacao, ginger, cherries, so on and so forth, have all been hybridized. Basically, anything that has ever been grown by man has been hybridized.

The only thing I can think of that might not have been hybridized by man are sea weeds.

Cheers,
Ian.

Eat a wide variety of plant foods, without relying too much on any one. 50 servings of 30 kcal of each type of plant is a lot better than 5 servings of 300 kcal of each type of plant. If you like monoeating than try to be sure at least to make it a different food or set of foods every day for a month before you go back to the same food.

Try to grow your own foods or get some of the non-major varieties (more flavor, lower shelf life) from the farmer's markets.

That's about the best you can do these days.