Byran, you used terminology here that I don't understand. What is the "hygienist" way of eating/living, etc? Is it significant to know? I know a bit about the hippocrates/wigmore camp, but don't seem to see the difference between the two. Do the hippicrates/wigmore people eat more greens and hygienist more fruit?

The hippocrates camp advocates a high sprout diet, and very low fruit. It is their experience that fruit causes a whole lot of disease, including cancer. With the emphasis on low fruit, this means that calories need to come from either fat or cooked foods. Hippocrates says let the necessary calories come from cooked foods (whereas the Wolfe/Cousens camps says let the calories come from fat).

For a person seeking a 100% raw diet, the hippocrates approach is not a viable solution, since it looks to include cooked starches as a source of calories.

There is one branch of the hygienic camp, the Shelton/Fry/Graham part, that advocates fruit as the main source of calories. Graham in some sense is the most extreme part of the hygiene group, as he advocates keeping fat under 10% of the caloric intake. The hygienic diet is based on fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. The Graham diet is more like fruits & greens, with very low caloric intake of non-green vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

The other aspect of the hygienic diet is no spices or condiments. They way without spices or condiments, you won't be tempted to eat foods that are not ideal for people to eat. Imagine this: take the salt, pepper, sugar, herbs, and spices out of a normal cooked pizza, and its going to taste like cardboard. This is because cooking kills all the taste.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2006 08:42PM by Bryan.

Thanks! That is great "food" for thought! I will study this some more!!

Bryan, how long have you been a hygienist, eating mostly fruit?

mtnkathy,

I've been a raw foodists for over 5 years, but I've been doing the hygienic 80-10-10 diet for 4 years now. Its been a process for me getting my fat intake down from my 80% fat raw diet down to 10% fat.

I am surprised that the Wigmore diet should contain anything cooked. I have several books written by her, and she says nothing about eating cooked food. Neither do I se anything about that in the Wigmore Foundation Health sites from NM and Puerto Rico. Is the Hippocrates institute really "a la Wigmore" nowadays, since they obviously goes against her advice when recommending cooked food?

Bryan wrote
> hippocrates camp advocates a high sprout diet, and very low fruit. It is their experience that fruit causes a whole lot of disease, including cancer.

That is not what they teach.

If you would like to learn about the Hippocrates Health Institute, start with these recordings:

[www.hippocratesinst.com]

If you want an introduction to the Ann Wigmore Living foods program, start with this eBook and audio:

eBook:
[www.therawdiet.com]

audio:
[www.therawdiet.com]


Bryan wrote

> the Wolfe/Cousens camps says let the calories come from fat).

They recommend a fat intake between 15% to 25%.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 01:47AM by Mike.

Here are some notes from a Brian Clement lecture, with his perspective on cooked and other things: [www.living-foods.com] . Here is another.

Here's a Clement quote on fruit:

Quote

For example, Brian Clement of The Hippocrates Institute said this to me about fruit: "An apple a day will keep the Doctor away- if you use it to throw it at him!" and then went on to talk about how fruits are hybridized, unneccessary, unhealthy and so on.

Here's his view on the ideal raw diet:

Quote

Consumption of living foods is on a weight basis. We suggest 80% raw, 20% cooked, by weight (not by volume or caloric value). An illustration. If you drink 2, 16-ounce glasses of raw veg/sprout juice per day, and eat 2 large salads per day (0.25-0.5 pounds per salad), you can eat 0.25-0.5 pounds of cooked food at each meal.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 04:51AM by Bryan.

Mike,

In which publications or website is this from?

Quote

They recommend a fat intake between 15% to 25%

The Tree of Life restaurant serves foods that is on average 70% fat. Why is it that he recommends 15-25%, but gives the people he is trying to heal 70% fat? This doesn't make sense to me.

By the way, I've was at a few Doug Graham events this year where they served meals. The meals all complied with 80-10-10.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 04:49AM by Bryan.

Hi Bryan,

In Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, page 43, Cousens writes that some people do better with around 10 to 15% fat. Some people do better with 20% to 25% fat.

I have not been at the Tree of Life and I do not know about the fat percentage in their gourmet meals.

Brian Clement and Hippocrates say that if you are healthy, eat fruit.

If you have symptoms of disease, they have found that it is best to stop eating fruit for a short time.

I am not sure about that article you posted above, I do not trust the author.

Here is a recent interview with Brian Clement which I have not listened to yet, it is an mp3 file:
[rawveganradio.podomatic.com]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 05:23AM by Mike.

Tom Billings was a regular raw vegan before his health went south and he started eating animal products. The notes that he wrote about Clement's lecture is consistent with other Clements material.

By the way, back when I was a high fat raw vegan, you were one too. What caused you to look at lowering your fat intake?

I would be interested in seeing Cousens-approved weekly menu that has no more than 25% fat. Please share, Mike.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

Cousens wrote about his diet in one of his books, I'll look it up. He said he usually eats two meals a day and one green juice. He eats phase 2 of Rainbow green.

He also fasts a total of 4 to 5 weeks throughout the year, sometimes water and sometimes juice.

I think he spoke about both his diet and fasting on one of his radio shows at [www.worldtalkradio.com] , I will go back and listen to them later today.

Mike



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 08:46AM by Mike.

This is 24% fat with no sweet fruit.
[nutritiondata.com]

Avocados, raw, California
100 grams
Cucumber, peeled, raw
2000 grams
Kale, raw
1000 grams
Lettuce, cos or romaine, raw
1000 grams
Nuts, brazilnuts, dried, unblanched
28g
Peppers, sweet, red, raw
1000 grams
Spinach, raw
284 g
Squash, zucchini, baby, raw
2000 grams
Tomatoes
300 g

Thanks arugula. What's the total calories for this?

Also, I would be really interested in real menu, from someone who actually follows Cousen's recommendations. Something that they really eat!

Mike, can you give us your recent real menu?

Gosia

PS My kids would absolutely refuse to eat (sweet)fruit-less diet.


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2006 09:37PM by rawgosia.

It's 2062 kcal but probably less than 80% of that is usable since the fiber content is so high (117 g).

Full analysis is here:

[nutritiondata.com]

Thanks arugula for all that work!

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

I had one question that keeps bugging me when I hear about these arguments on "sweet"fruit and "non-sweet" veggies, etc... When I look on nutritiondata, for example, one can see that most vegetables like lettuce, spinach, etc.. and so called "non-sweet" fruit like tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, etc... contain a very high proportion of their calories from sugars, just as much if not more than so called "sweet" fruit such as apples, etc...

So I don't understand all this talk about avoiding "sweet" fruit if there are just as many sugars in most anything else you might considering eating that is high in carbohydrates.

Is this classification based on just taste? Or is there some kind of scientific basis to it?

Cheers,
Jose

Bryan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> ...Here's a Clement quote on fruit:For example, Brian
> Clement of The Hippocrates Institute said this to
> me about fruit: "An apple a day will keep the
> Doctor away- if you use it to throw it at him!"
> and then went on to talk about how fruits are
> hybridized, unneccessary, unhealthy and so on.
>
> Here's his view on the ideal raw diet: Consumption
> of living foods is on a weight basis. We suggest
> 80% raw, 20% cooked, by weight...

Perhaps one can eat 20% cooked food if one is healthy,but it's a great danger in that. And as for not eating fruit if one is ill...? My mom got 2 severe forms of cancer at age 79, and she had the most awful values in her blood tests etc and hadn't even the strength to sit up in bed. But she refused the strong cell poisons she was supposed to take, we took her home against the hospitals wish, and slowly - with only crushed watermelon the first week as she was to weak to chew - she got better with a severe Wigmore diet, lots of sprouts, wheat grass juice, vegetables and LOTS OF RAW AND DRIED FRUIT. Her health improved week after week. She climbed a mountain 3000 feet high 6 months later, and for more then 7 years had a wonderful- or rather spectacular - health. All her friends and relatives looked upon her as a miracle as noone thought that she would survive.

Then she broke her hip, was ordered a very strong synthetic morphine-like drug, which made her lightheaded and overoptimistic about everything, so she got it into her head that as she was so healthy cancer-wise these days she could eat 25% cooked and grilled food. That very soon increased to 50-60%, she got both her cancer forms back, in desperation again started the Wigmore diet, but it was to late...

> Mike, can you give us your recent real menu?

My menu includes all foods on the Rainbow Green Live Food cuisine phase chart. Phase 1, 1.5, 2, plus foods in the minimal use category.

Phase Chart:
[www.treeoflife.nu]

I also make a green juice in the evening when I get home from work. The green juice recipe is on page 2 of the phase chart.

My recent menu:

Green smoothie for breakfast with
- bananna, kale, goji berry, cayenne pepper, tumeric, soaked flax seeds.

Lunch- a salad with greens, pears, sea vegetables, cucumber, red bell pepper, celery, himalayan salt, bee pollen, carrot

pre-dinner: green juice

dinner: a couple oranges followed by either a small salad and a gourmet dish, or a big salad with either avocado or soaked nuts / seeds.

Sometimes I will have Wigmore Energy Soup for dinner.

>> What caused you to look at lowering your fat intake?

A few years ago I checked my percentages at FitDay.com and found that my fat intake was around 50% to 60% a day. I found that the oils and avocado made my fat intake too high. Since I measured it, I learned how to lower my fat and now eat around 20% to 25% fat.

Mike, it seems that you have sweet fruit in your every meal. I like salads too, but I find that one per day is plenty for me. Otherwise, I feel fruit-deficient!

Gosia


RawGosia channel
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Yes, I eat sweet fruits for almost every meal.

Mike

I think the "sweet" designation refers only to taste and is reflected in a different sugar substrate.

But there are some other differences as well, and these might account for lower GI and GL ratings of nonsweet fruit compared to sweet fruit, and I think that is what motivates the people who think fruit is to be limited or avoided.

You could compare equicaloric servings of tomatoes and apples.

Compared to apples:

tomatoes have much more protein (for 80 kcal servings, 4.8 g vs 0.3 g)
a little bit more fiber (4.8 g vs 4 g)
less sugar (12.1 g vs 16 g)
somewhat more fat (9% vs 3% of energy)

Also, the sugar substrate is different:

less sucrose
more glucose
more fructose

Surprisingly, the total fructose content is higher in the tomato, but the ratio of fructose to total sugar content is also lower in the tomato.

These differences might not look like much (except for the protein contents) but put them all together and multiply by a factor of 10 or more and they have may have different effects on the body.

The nutrient profile of tomatoes looks more like that of the wild not-so-sweet fruits that our wild primate cousins eat. So it probably does make some sense to emphasize them. But it doesn't taste as good!

I think that if you get enough fiber, a wide variety of foods, adequate EFAs and essential aminos, and you still have a lot of kcals left over, then you should be able to eat some sweet fruit, maybe not 20 pieces but 4-6 seems reasonable.

It might help for sugar sensitives (prediabetics and diabetics) to eat some higher fat and protein sources along with their sweet fruit to control their blood sugar rises but the food combining types think this is a nono.

re: "wild not-so-sweet fruits that our wild primate cousins eat"

In places like Indonesia, the wild primates feast on durian. Many of the wild tropical fruit are sweet. Its only in the temperate climates that the fruit doesn't get that sweet. Still, even in the temperate climates, you can get fig and persimmon trees.

Don't you think that having fruit that tastes good is a factor in a tree's ability to propagate its species, that is, the better a wild tree's fruit is, the more likely the animals will eat it, the more the tree gets to propagate.

I too tend to think that sweet taste matters. This is our primal taste, observed even in unborn babies. I miss dearly the availability of sweet fruit after my family moved to Tasmania. I can definitely feel the difference when I don't get enough, and imagining myself feasting on durian for days on end is an effortless exercise. Without enough of sweet fruit, I feel hungry. I look forward to bananas getting cheaper here... (they say a couple of months till that finally happens, we had a storm in Australia that wiped out the bananas, and they got very expensive) Bananas and other expensive sweet fruit that we buy is reserved mainly for the kids. They still have their morning banana smoothie. I still have my oranges, apples and pears. And, I dream of tropical fruit. Lucky those who live in tropics...

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

>>Don't you think that having fruit that tastes good is a factor in a tree's ability to propagate its species, that is, the better a wild tree's fruit is, the more likely the animals will eat it, the more the tree gets to propagate.

Yes, of course, it makes perfect sense. But still we have perverted those natural ones by making them even sweeter, in a less nutritious result (not only less protein, fewer EFAs, less fiber, but also diminished vitamin and mineral content) that is in Katherine Milton's words "perhaps more demanding of some features of human physiology" and that's the problem.

Hey arugula, thanks for the clarification. I do have one observation I would like to make on the concrete example you looked at.

Comparing tomatoes to apples, you commented on the relative abundance of protein and fat in tomatoes compared to an equal calorie serving of apples. I would suggest that this might be due to the greater number of seeds present in the tomatoes, which are likely high in protein and fat, like most seeds. Even though nutritiondata would take this into account in their nutritional breakdown, I would think that it would not be largely assimilated by humans, since those seeds just tend to bypass our GI tract pretty much whole. So I'm not sure how much of that protein and fat we are actually absorbing. If we discount these possible unabsorbable nutrients, then the nutritional breakdown between tomatoes and apples might begin to look very similar indeed. Of course, apples contain seeds that are taken into account by nutritiondata as well, but they are much less in proportion to the rest of the edible fruit that tomatoes would be, so their contribution would not be as important.

Looking at things like cucumber, which have more softer and edible seeds, an 84 calorie serving does have less sugar (9.4 grams) and much more protein and a little more fat, but less fibre than the apples option.

However, you could also take 84 calories of a "sweet" fruit like casaba melons (supposedly quite hybridised), and looking at the nutrient breakdown, which compared to cucumber has 73(melon)/70(cucumber) calories from carbs, so a bit more carbs, less fat 3/5 but actually more protein 12/9.

Also looking at EFA's, things like tomatoes and cucumber are not very good in that department, very high omega-6 relative to -3, whereas the casaba melon is quite good there.

Looking at vegetables like lettuce and greens in general is quite different because they are so much more nutrient and fibre dense of course, and generally very good in EFA's.

So do you think one can make this broad category of "sweet" and "non-sweet" fruit that many raw-food celebrities adhere to? Is this a scientific thing to do or just a fairly good rule of thumb?

Cheers,
J

It seems to me like sweet is certainly a preferred taste, but the desire can be changed. For example, since removing most of what we refer to as the sweet fruits from my diet, I now find that I don't want them. Perhaps that is just me and we are all different.

I had a banana mango smoothie this morning with 2 large handfuls of spinich and one lemon. It was WAAAAAY to sweet for me. I prefer no sweet fruits, or at least, just one at a time.

Has anyone else had the experience of losing their "sweet tooth" once stopping alot of sweet fruits?

>So do you think one can make this broad category of "sweet" and "non-sweet" fruit that many raw-food celebrities adhere to? Is this a scientific thing to do or just a fairly good rule of thumb?

I think that in the nutrition lit the colloquial use is found: nonsweet fruit often goes into the vegetable category. It gets treated like a vegetable.

But I think that the distinction between nonsweet and sweet has elements of empiricism that are being blatantly exploited. Sugar is getting a faddish bad rap. If you eat mostly leaves, you are eating mostly sugar.

The USDA tomato fatty acid data is probably only a crude estimation. I don't think the individual polyunsaturated fatty acids sum up to the total provided. I checked out the Denmark database and it has for raw tomato o63 as 10:1, which though not horrible is not as good as expected. But zucchini, bell pepper, cucumber all have great ratios. So it might just be an exception for a fairly decent rule of thumb.

[www.foodcomp.dk]

I don't think the seeds of tomatoes contribute much to nutrient content. I just cut open (and ate) a tomato and the volume of the seeds was minimal compared to that for the rest of the fruit. But it was a fairly big tomato. That comparison might not hold for the tiny tomatoes (which are better choices, regardless, because they have a higher surface area to volume ratio and proportionately more of the nutrients that tend to concentrate at or near the skin).

Cool, thanks for the info

Cheers,
J