Thanks for posting those comments, Troy. However, the question that was asked does not get to the issue we're discussing. The question you need to ask of Dr. Graham is, if a person tries celery everyday (or at least frequently) for, say, a 3-year period and finds it consistently bad tasting, and has the same experience with the lettuces and other greens, should that person eat them anyway? It has happened to me, sometimes for many months at a time, and others have indicated to me that they have no taste for celery or greens at all, ever. I agree that if these people keep eating correctly and keep trying greens, sooner or later something will appeal. But sometimes it's MUCH later and therefore the question is, should these people force themselves to eat these foods in the meantime? If not, what's a "safe" period to go without them? I contend it is "safe" to go without them indefinitely, until such time as they appeal. If you press Doug, he will likely give you a period of weeks or months. That's the heart of the disagreement.

Here is Doug Graham's relevant comment from the note he sent to Dave regarding his answer to my question ("Does we need to eat greens, even if we don't like them?", and I quote:

"I believe the answer to the question she asks is "Yes" "

If you are doing great on a high fruit, low fat vegan diet, it's because it represents a great improvement over what you were doing before. If you stay on it, most likely you'll have to make further refinements later because even 811 isn't the end of the line. The tendency is to give credit to the foods we're eating rather than the fact that we're no longer eating the foods that were causing our problems. Also, greens allow high fruit eating raw fooders to overeat without the consequences (excess fuel/waste, not necessarily excess body fat), which is one of their benefits. This was included in my article too, and I suspect is another reason Doug didn't like it, as he tends to advocate overeating, imo. That's why exercise figures so prominently in his 'program'.

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

thanks nora and all for your commments.

no i don't think dg says we should force anything.

however, i think nora is just saying that since he holds the position that

(A) to go without greens long term is not wise, then it follows that

a person that is not drawn to greens would have to force them down, in order to fulfill (A) at some point.

"the only thing I've ever heard him say about the amount of greens is to eat as much of them *as you care for*. "

Sarah,
Does that mean if a person never cares for them, the person should never eat them? I say yes. Others, including Doug Graham (apparently) say no.

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

i'd be interested in your article, nora...

rawnora Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> If you are doing great on a high fruit, low fat
> vegan diet, it's because it represents a great
> improvement over what you were doing before. If
> you stay on it, most likely you'll have to make
> further refinements later because even 811 isn't
> the end of the line. The tendency is to give
> credit to the foods we're eating rather than the
> fact that we're no longer eating the foods that
> were causing our problems.

Nora, I'd be interested to know what exactly you think further refining of a high fruit low fat diet would look like. And are you there personally?

Also, greens allow
> high fruit eating raw fooders to overeat without
> the consequences (excess fuel/waste, not
> necessarily excess body fat), which is one of
> their benefits. This was included in my article
> too, and I suspect is another reason Doug didn't
> like it, as he tends to advocate overeating, imo.
> That's why exercise figures so prominently in his
> 'program'.

Nora, it is my understanding that exercise doesn't burn that many calories, as I'm sure you know. I'm curious as to why you think Doug's advocating of "overeating" relates to the prominence of physical activity in the program. I'm also curious as to when and how you have heard him advocate overeating. I'm not saying that you're wrong at all, but it is just contrary to everything I've heard from him in the last 2-3 years.

Here are a couple of his recent posts from Vegsource.

1) Fruit is fuel. Do you refuel your car, even when the tank is full?
If you are hungry, eat. If not, don't. The numbers can tell you a bit,
but how you feel should tell you much more.

Dr. D

2) Getting sufficient sleep, calmness at mealtime, fresh air and sunshine,
fun, and generally improving your health all support optimum
digestion.
Your health cannot be better than its weakest link, at least not for
long.
Eat within your digestive capacity.

Dr D

3) One: In the world of nutrition, "more" does not equal "better" and
"most" does not equal "best." "Optimum" nutrition comes when we
do not eat or get too much, or too little, of each nutrient.
Too much food is no better than not enough food.
Too much carbohydrate is equally as much a problem as not
enough.

Too much, by its very nature, is unhealthy for us, for it is literally
more than we can handle, hence, too much. In order to eat more
carbohydrate calories than we require without overeating on total
calories, we must undereat on fats and or proteins, creating other
problems at those ends as well. Or, we overeat on total calories,
creating yet other problems.

Balance is the answer when it comes to nutrition and overall health.
Too much sleep is not better than not enough.

Dr D
------------

Everything I've heard from Dr. D stresses the importance of a holistic view of health. Indeed, the reason I started looking into more of his materials in the first place is because I liked that he didn't focus on just one aspect of health, but how they all work together - *including* exercise and diet. And he didn't sound fanatical about any one of the aspects of health, which would have turned me off.

Respectfully,
Sarah

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]

An additional question for Nora is whether she agrees with Dougs view of low fat or is this something we should be less rigid about?

wallace

fresh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thanks nora and all for your commments.
>
> no i don't think dg says we should force
> anything.
>
> however, i think nora is just saying that since he
> holds the position that
>
> (A) to go without greens long term is not wise,
> then it follows that
>
> a person that is not drawn to greens would have
> to force them down, in order to fulfill (A) at
> some point.

I understand what you're saying, Fresh...

My instinctive feeling about that is - if a person lived on a fruit only diet for that long and their system was that sensitive, that this would be sort of a moot point because their body would be more than able to tell them when they needed to consume greens whether it took a year, 5 years or 15 years. It would be different for each individual depending on their previous diet, habits, and even the lifestyle of their ancestors.

I also think that if DG's opinion about fruit-only diets is true, that it is quite *possible*, if you were fully living out the many aspects of health (not just a fruit diet), and your health history was relatively clean, that you could probably thrive for many, many years on fruit only. Even though (or maybe because) I'm a relative newbie, I'm starting to realize that a year is nothing, 5 years is just getting into a groove and 10-12 years is establishing your lifestyle. Most people are on SAD for 2, 3, 4 decades before finding raw. It makes sense to me that it would take a looooooong time for your body to sort everything out and repair itself afterwards.

I do agree with you all that you shouldn't force yourself to eat greens (or anything) that are not appealing.

I hope DG comes back soon and answers all the questions we have waiting for him over on Vegsource I'm really curious about his responses too!

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2007 05:57PM by Sparkler.

> "Well just eat what is availble and feel like
>
> this morning I had papaya and lemon water
>
> later I had some cherries
>
> then I had a bundle of bananas
>
> then I a few mangos
>
> and some more lemon water
>
> then I had some cabbage leaves


So I posted this and then I realized it was a great example of the low fat diet Bryan is always talking about, I wonder what he thinks about it? I don't know if it was everything she ate that day, it seems a little light.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2007 09:06PM by tropical.

tropical Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > "Well just eat what is availble and feel like
> >
> > this morning I had papaya and lemon water
> >
> > later I had some cherries
> >
> > then I had a bundle of bananas
> >
> > then I a few mangos
> >
> > and some more lemon water
> >
> > then I had some cabbage leaves
>
>
> So I posted this and then I realized it was a
> great example of the low fat diet Bryan is always
> talking about, I wonder what he thinks about it? I
> don't know if it was everything she ate that day,
> it seems a little light.

If you're talking about the 80/10/10 Bryan that I'm thinking of, I don't think he'd say that he follows this sort of meal plan very often. He seems to go along with 80/10/10 and that means lots of leafy greens. I think Bryan has said he does eat lots of greens.



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

I think we all have to agree what the interpretation of what a Fruitarian is first before any discussion can start, so many people have opposing interpretations, for me a Fruitarian is simply a strict raw vegan/frugivore and not only someone that eat "fruit" only, so in that case for me eating greens is simply a personal choice and not something you "have to do", when I first started out people always said that "I had to do this and I had to do that" and it was all based on hearsay, rumour or what some guru said, none of it was basde on their own long term experience because nobody had stayed raw long enough to really know anything.

Just my 2 cents..

F1

Sarah,
Thanks for your post. Consumption is very closely tied to expenditure in Doug Graham's world, but in reality it is not, as you note. I contend that when people are extremely healthy, they can eat very little by comparison to the quantities that Dr. Graham advocates even while maintaining an activity level that would qualify as athletic by any standard. I've had discussions with followers of Dr. Graham’s ‘program’ about the merits of decreasing consumption as the body becomes more efficient, and they tell me that if they tried to decrease their intake they wouldn't be able to do their normal workouts. What that says is that they feel weak when they don't eat, and when they feel weak, they eat. Weakness is not hunger. Eating to resolve weakness guarantees the return of weakness and slows down healing, cleansing and bodily adjustment. Symptom suppression by any other name is just as flawed when practiced by raw fooders as when SAD eaters take drugs.

Being able to maintain a rigorous workout schedule isn’t a priority in transition. It's true that sedentary people may need to get into the habit of moving more, but at the other end of the scale, people who come to raw food with athletic aspirations typically have to be prepared to cut back on their activity levels for awhile. This is very difficult for people who think of themselves as serious athletes, and often what they end up doing instead is eating to re-stimulate, which keeps addiction alive. It’s true that a body in a fit condition adjusts more efficiently but during the initial stages of transition it is also very important to give the body the rest it needs, and there will be times when the mental compulsion to work out will have to be fought in order for a person to fully cooperate with his/her body.

Generally, people who eat from addiction feel weak before eating and energized afterwards. By contrast, it has been noted by people who’ve recovered from food addiction that energy levels remain high even during hunger and drop slightly after eating. This is as it should be, since food does not return energy to the body for 1 to 24 hours after eating. While the food is being processed, energy is being directed to digestion that would otherwise be available for outward activity.

Most of the time when people discuss Doug Graham’s recommendations there is more talk of the “dangers” of “undereating” than of the problems that overeating creates. It seems to me the only danger of undereating is when a new raw fooder tries to keep consumption low and experiences such unpleasant cleansing symptoms that the diet is seen as too great a sacrifice. This is an emotional risk, not a physiological one. There are NO physiological risks involved in “undereating” (no matter how you define that), except perhaps in anorexics who may not be able to heed hunger’s call when it is felt, or indirectly if a person doesn't eat enough to keep cleansing symptoms manageable and ends up going back to cooked food. If a person is eating less fuel than s/he is expending, reserves will be used up in due time, just as during a fast, and at that time real hunger will be felt as unmistakeably as the need to breathe air or have a bowel movement. Not very many people can do this because it involves ignoring symptoms rather than eating in response to them, but for the rare person who CAN do it, it is BENEFICIAL, not "dangerous".

I don't think it's helpful to speak in generalities when discussing the issue of overeating. Everyone can agree on the general point that overeating is harmful, and nobody has to do anything tough like not eat when their gut rumbles. But in order to make people fully aware of what they need to do, we need to talk in terms that they can relate to. Like, for example, people generally should not be eating in the morning. It’s very tough to get over the breakfast habit and if a person who tries it ends up bingeing at lunch time, that just means they need to go slower and maybe just *delay* breakfast. As a person stays raw and continues refining the diet (i.e., eating less fat, no condiments, simpler meals, etc.), s/he should also work on decreasing intake over time, increasing the time between meals and ignoring symptoms (that means, not eating in response to weakness, headache, stomach discomfort, lightheadedness, tiredness, irritability, etc.). People also need to know the sometimes subtle and oft-ignored signs and symptoms of overeating, which I explained in my article that was vetoed. Nobody's talking about any of this.

Although it is entirely appropriate for people new to raw food to overeat, even necessary in most cases, the problem is that it never gets stipulated that this is a temporary strategy, employed for emotional reasons, and that ultimately it is abusive to the body. As a person gets into years 5-8 and beyond (or sooner for some people, depending on age and other factors), the body becomes too efficient to take that kind of abuse. Many long term high fruit raw fooders eat almost constantly, and this is a problem that shows up in many ways that then later get mis-attributed to “lack of minerals”, especially if the person is one of those who doesn’t care for greens. It is noted that these problems occur less in long term raw fooders who eat greens and this is misinterpreted as greens fulfilling some nutritional need that fruit does not. However, I say the reason is because greens have far fewer calories than fruit and do not burden the body with excess fuel the way overeating fruit does. Once again, the problems are originating from excess and have nothing to do with deficiency, although that’s the first thing people think of. I explain in my article how the eating of greens can be a healthy tool during transition, for this reason. Ultimately, however, even the eating of greens in this way is a replacement strategy for simply EATING LESS. People can eat less without eating greens at all and accomplish the same goal – the ability to eat only in response to true hunger.

Sarah wrote: "I also think that if DG's opinion about fruit-only diets is true, that it is quite *possible*, if you were fully living out the many aspects of health (not just a fruit diet), and your health history was relatively clean, that you could probably thrive for many, many years on fruit only."

There is always this qualification that only certain very healthy people can trust their senses. I’m always hearing that “when your senses have clarified”, you can trust them. No. Senses may get better as a person stays raw, of course, but it is not necessary for our senses to be perfect in order for us to trust them. Early in transition it’s true that our senses will guide us to eat foods that remind us of cooked fare. Who hasn’t eaten raw lasagna or raw pizza in the first few months or years of being raw? That’s perfectly okay because these foods are still an enormous improvement over cooked food. Even while eating those less than optimal foods, however, healing will proceed and our senses will lead us ever closer to the ideal diet, if we're listening, and that's not hard to do. The ability of the taste buds and other senses to perform is proportionate to the condition of the rest of the body. There should be NO qualifications to the idea that we can ALL trust our senses and if our taste buds rebel against ANY given food, this feedback should not be overridden.

Best regards,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

Nora, I agree with you about no breakfast. All the studies that show people do better with breakfast were done on people eating the S.A.D. and they needed a stimulant to get going in the morning. Our body needs that time without the energy intensive activity of digestion going on and, if we are not hungry, we should not break our fast until noon. Some days I get hungry and eat a banana at 10 am, but then there are some days that I don't eat anything until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. It's important to give your body that rest. Did our ancient ancestors come out of the cave to find a breakfast waiting for him? Probably not.

I also agree that we shouldn't eat all of the time, graze all day. I think that is why some people are low on energy while eating raw. They never give their body time to rest from the work of digestion. Everybody remembers being tired after a big meal, like Thanksgiving dinner. That is because the body says, I need more energy to digest this huge amount of food and I'm going to take some from you, so then we feel like we need a nap.

I am not sure I agree that we don't need greens, but I maintain that it is possible. But I definitely agree that we should listen to our body's signals and I feel better when I eat greens right now. Having Type 1 Diabetes, my blood sugars are usually really good after eating greens. So I feel I need them right now and maybe long term.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

rawnora Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Consumption is very closely
> tied to expenditure in Doug Graham's world, but in
> reality it is not, as you note. I contend that
> when people are extremely healthy, they can eat
> very little by comparison to the quantities that
> Dr. Graham advocates even while maintaining an
> activity level that would qualify as athletic by
> any standard.

why do you suppose then that F1 is thriving and
tom billings for example did not? since it seems you're proposing that it's nearly impossible to be deficient in nutrients?

[www.jotform.us]

Fresh,
Your question is a bit indirect but I'll do my best. I AM proposing that deficiency is a practical impossibility, ESPECIALLY in raw fooders. However, I'm not sure what this has to do with F1 thriving and Billings failing. I can tell you that the reason F1 is doing well is because he's obviously living in accord with his biological mandates. Nature works that way -- when certain requisite conditions are met, success is evident and where there is success you can be sure that there is respect for and cooperation with nature. To say specifically why Billings failed, I'd have to know specific information about his diet and lifestyle habits but generally I can tell you that he failed to meet the conditions required for health, obviously. This had nothing to do with deficiency, I can guarantee, but rather excess. I'm speculating here but most likely it was excessive non-foods like condiments, supplements perhaps, eating the wrong foods, overeating, misinterpretation of symptoms, failure to give up the medical way of approaching disease (which holds that symptoms should be suppressed), among many other dietary factors plus other non-dietary ones such as sleep, exercise, emotional habits, work, living conditions, relationships, etc.

Regards,
Nora

rawnora Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fresh,
> Your question is a bit indirect but I'll do my
> best. I AM proposing that deficiency is a
> practical impossibility, ESPECIALLY in raw
> fooders. However, I'm not sure what this has to
> do with F1 thriving and Billings failing.

it is relevant because f1 is minimizing food and so did billings and they were both fruitarians.

certainly billings made errors, but it's not so apparent why he did not thrive as what he did was similar to f1.

read his story on www.beyondveg.com



> I'm speculating
> here but most likely it was excessive non-foods
> like condiments, supplements perhaps, eating the
> wrong foods, overeating, misinterpretation of
> symptoms, failure to give up the medical way of
> approaching disease (which holds that symptoms
> should be suppressed), among many other dietary
> factors plus other non-dietary ones such as sleep,
> exercise, emotional habits, work, living
> conditions, relationships, etc.

maybe you should read his story before speculating.

:-)

[www.jotform.us]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2007 05:03PM by fresh.

I've read his website and his errors were clear to me at the time. It's been a long time since I read it and I certainly don't have time now, that's why I chose to guess. He didn't fail because he cooperated with nature too much, that's for sure. Frankly, when people call themselves "fruitarian" it's a red flag to me as it usually (present company excepted, F1 ) means they are striving for some ideal that doesn't exist except in their minds. In Billings' case I'm not sure what motivates him to use that term but since he is so hell-bent on villifying fruit-eating I suspect he just wants to make everyone think he did everything perfectly, and still failed. That's most certainly not the case, I can assure you. One of the reasons why F1 is thriving is because he doesn't let his mental ideas take precedence over his sense-directed preferences. That's the MAIN reason Billings failed.

Nora
www.RawSchool.com

ok, i thought you had not read it, based on what you said about his reasons for failure. my point is just that his diet was not so bad that he should have failed for reasons of nutrient deficiency.

[www.jotform.us]

fresh,

I read the Billings stuff. He continued to try to live his post modern industrial lifestyle without making sufficient changes to it other than diet. Without the shielding of his cooked foods, he became whacked out. He did not build the mental/psychological/spiritual poise necessary to live in our very "crazy" world without the shielding/dulling of the cooked foods. Thus he was driven to eat foods to desensitize him. An alternative to eating desensitizing foods would be to 1) get out of the crazy lifestyle or 2) the stress/anxiety all comes from the mind, so retrain the mind to love and be grateful the craziness.

yes, bryan, that does impact but i don't think sufficient to cause someone to be 50 pounds underweight at his height.

i'm thinking it was caloric or nutrient deficit (maybe eating foods from one location, FL) or he did not give his body enough time to rebuild. i don't recall how long he went. it's still a little puzzling, and not so apparent that he was doing it so wrong.

anyway, back to the present, i was thinking that nora is implying that if one feels a need to counteract sweetness of fruit, then one is overeating. this could be true, i'm not sure at this point.

[www.jotform.us]

Fascinating post Nora, and I tend to agree with you. If you could direct me to where you discuss fat on your website, that would be great.

We are vibrational beings, it is well known for example that sunlight can drastically alter how hungry we are.

Doug for me misses some of the spiritual stuff behind raw foodism but noone is perfect!

Woolfe is too new agey for me!

Keika sidha is someone I am reading at the moment

Always question your gurus!!!

Wallace

Fresh,
I had another look at Billings' bio and I don't recommend it for anyone who hasn't been educating him/herself long enough to discern truth from falsehood.

In one passage he describes his "idyllic" life in Florida where he learned about "wild foods" from some author he names and says he was eating lots of fruit and spending lots of time in the sunshine. He then goes on to say that anyone familiar with NH would recognize this as an ideal lifestyle, conducive to very high levels of health. Well, there is nobody on earth who could make such an assessment based on so little information. In addition, anybody who thinks he needs to eat "wild" foods in order to thrive is probably eating things he shouldn't, like toxic wild greens. There just isn't that much truly wild fruit available, and if you're able to get it you surely don't need anybody telling you how to eat it. It reminds me of Victoria Boutenko's book wherein she writes that her husband used to stand looking in their refrigerator full of food and complain that he didn't want any of it. There are many clues there as to why their diet was failing. To name one, why are people who have been raw a very long time and are supposedly eating optimally keeping their food in a refrigerator? I don't keep my fruit in a refrigerator, in fact I even try to shop in stores that sell fruit in UNrefrigerated displays. The kind of food that requires refrigeration is the kind that leads raw fooders down the road to failure, if they don't give it up when their bodies say "enough".

Generally, Billings and Victoria made/are making the same exact mistakes: they experience symptoms and they misinterpret them based on their failure to abandon the medical model of disease. Billings openly says he now writes about Ayurveda, which is just another permutation of medicine. He's deeply involved in alternative medicine and always has been and, as a group, alternative health professionals labor under the same mistaken ideas as their allopathic counterparts. He also mentions that he considers himself fortunate that he never “got involved in the philosophies of natural hygiene.” I daresay if he had, he’d have succeeded (which I guess is defined as staying raw long term and enjoying a high level of health) because he’d been able to understand his symptoms. His writings are chock full of clues as to why he failed, but only if you know enough to recognize BS when you see it. Most newbies don’t, and that’s why I think it’s a good idea for them to confine their readings to less speculative and more objective info (like that found at www.RawFoodExplained.com and www.RawSchool.com, among others).

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

Wallace,
Thanks for the compliment. I don't think I have any writings on my site that have to do with fat specifically, but I do talk about how much of it I eat and what I think is optimal in various places like my 'raw evolution' essay and perhaps the one on emotional eating. If you have any specific questions, you could join my Yahoo group and peruse my old posts, which are numerous and I'm sure cover this topic in depth collectively. There's a button on my home page to join. If your questions aren't answered by the archived posts, feel free to post them and I'll reply.

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

good points nora.
thanks for your thoughts.
still don't see how his mistakes would result in emaciation, but i may be underestimating the compounding effects of his mistakes.

many of us are thriving and that's what matters.

[www.jotform.us]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2007 08:14PM by fresh.

fresh,

I've seen people become emaciated because of their minds. If the mind is disturbed enough, this can consume a person's entire energy input. If this is the case, there is no energy for digestion, and once the nutrient absorption is halted, the body starts to feed on itself, even if there is food being eaten. For a person in this state, eating foods that slow down and slow the mind actually helps, because if the mind can become still, there is energy for carrying on the various bodily functions.

The hygienists talk about mental/emotional poise as an essential part of health. Unfortunately, there is not much description on the hygienic literature on how to achieve this poise.

interesting, bryan, thanks for your thoughts.

I agree with Nora's post, except that part about the keeping my grapes in the fridge..which I don't think is really a big deal

well I guess my other minor disagreement is is in my agreement that food slows down whatever cleansing reaction that is going on...but that it is perfectly OK to 'suppress' symptoms such as weakness, irritability with simple raw foods even overeating raw foods (the idea that it is necessary to eat per activity IS less sound however)....what else can you do? unless you have the ideal circumstances for complete rest and breakdown/elimination of internal deposits. Although one should be suspicious about having more energy after eating...for me..this is very foreign..as eating is sometimes a tool simply for calming those energies. I've very OK with /conscious of - that - at this point, and certainly have no desire to eat when truly hungry. For one, the water alone in the fruits and veggies...is very necessary - as a solvent or what have you, at least for me at my current state.

The Billing's thing has been discussed so much its boring, people love scary stories...

anyway, just read the old threads...theres way more then just the poise factor..but its good to hear that that is being listed as the more significant..whereas people love to jump on the 'under-eating' or 'conventional produce'..what a joke. Other then poise, its also been pointed out that he instituted a 'program' of 'fruitarianism' that was very much a struggle, and very much out of step with what he saw as a sustainable reality. For many people..the 811 thing...is so very much the same...as if eating a certain way..yielded some kind of results or something. In it there also the idea/mindset to neglect - like billings - any arising putrefaction/elimination of stirred up wastes..which can make one very ill, thin..probably unable to uptake nutrients etc...a downward spiral. So in a sense...doing the overeating thing..Wolfe or Graham..whatever seems to slow things down...make things more normal...and scientific or whatever..for folks

Bryan, you made a good point. In the past, I admit, I did find myself consumed too much on trying to be perfect. These days, instead of eating what I "think" I should eat, I focus on eating what my body likes. I find this approach much easier and more natural way of looking after my emotional and physical health. As said earlier, what my body likes, is good for me.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

Cool thread. I like all this. I know I myself often think about what to eat rather than eat what feels appealing. It's time to start letting go of this. Thanks. I've been eating more and more mono lately and that is nice.

Nora, I'm also really interested in your article. I'll have a lookie see at the website you link to. If I don't see it then maybe I'll ask where we can find it. I am impressed by your writing in this thread. And I hope you didn't ever think or feel that I was being in the least bit hostile about your stance on Graham's teachings and writings. I do like clarity though. That's all. Graham did answer the question. Here's his response:

"Most people that don't like greens have just never eaten them,
don't know what taste ranges they could be appreciating, and
simply have never even attempted to develop a liking for them.
They are missing out.

"No, I don't recommend eating greens that taste bad, bitter, or foul.
No, I don't recommend eating greens all the time, always, no
matter what. I often go days, and sometimes weeks, without eating
greens. I have gone months without eating them, back when my
diet was more random. But I do not recommend avoiding greens
entirely. I believe they are a part of an overall healthy and
nutritious diet.

Dr D"



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

anaken Wrote:

>
> whereas people love to jump on the
> 'under-eating' or 'conventional produce'..what a
> joke.

hello anaken. (so sorry i checked the main board! ;-) )

not sure what the joke is or what exactly you're referring to but since i have made claims about not doing well on conventional produce, i suppose my whole life has been a joke according to you ... boo hoo!

i have tried on 3 occasions to eat a lot of conventional from 3 different farm stands. certainly my conclusions could be wrong, but i thought it didn't work for several reasons..

the taste was not as good - indicating lower quality/nutrients
appetite was not satisfied - indicating lower quality
felt nerve damage - indicating pesticide damage

so while you are perhaps drawing conclusions from your experience on conventional, and i certainly eat some conventional, there can be reasons for it being problematic in large amounts in my view and experience.

I DO NOT want to stir things up but -

Taste and appetite satisfaction may or may not be indicators of lower quality.
Also, what does nerve damage actually feel like, can you feel such a thing?