by Harley (aka Durianrider)
1. They think sweet fruit is the enemy!
“Dont eat fruit! It will make you fat! It will give you diabeties! It will rot your teeth! It will make you insane!” All of which are total rubbish. We run the most popular raw foods website and have never seen a single case of tooth decay, diabeties, insanity or severe body blubber from fruit eating. Yes we have seen people shooting up meth/being bulimic/anorexic whilst being a ‘fruitarian’ and loosing their teeth, we have seen people eating high fat raw diets and getting diabetic symptoms, we have seen people get depression from just trying to eat 10 oranges a day. Sweet fruit is the ultimate food for humans. Fruit is your friend. Every cell in the human body runs on glucose and or fructose. To starve the cells of natural glucose/fructose from sweet fruit is a health crime.
2. They think they need to ‘calorie restrict’
“Don’t eat more than a handful of food at a meal! Eat light! Remember that humans are designed to be breatharians!!” Well, I’ve met a few breatharians in my world travels and I’ve not met more confused people. A mosquito has a very small stomach but watch how much it expands after meal. Adult male orangutans weigh around 90kg and eat up to 8500 calories a day. Calorie restriction does not work in nature as the animal that eats the least gets eaten first as it doesnt have enough energy to mate, forage or avoid being hunted. One raw food lady in Australia committed suicide 2 years ago after trying to calorie restrict her way to ‘health’. I’ve had friends end up in mental wards. I’ve seen models just lose it big time from calorie restriction and end up becoming severely overweight. We need a lot of sweet fruit calories every day. Sweet fruit is the best caloric source for humans. NOBODY gets overweight from eating copious amounts of sweet fruit, EVER!
3. They think they can fast their way to health
So many people under eat on sweet fruits and then go and load up on greasy, oily, salty high fat versions of low fat cooked carb foods and wonder they they feel sick. They get told they need to fast/cleanse to aid the ‘detox’ when actually its a case of ‘tox’ from too much fat, dehydrated foods, lack of carbs and or too much salt. If you want to cleanse/fast, try living the 80/10/10 lifestyle for a few months and then see how you much you want to fast then! You simply wont as its such a clean way to live/eat.
4. They think they don’t need to drink water?
Water comes from pipes and plastic and that isn’t natural so I’m not going to drink water and just dehydrate myself instead.. Well my ex housemate had the same belief and drank little water as a result. She got sick after eating raw animal products and did a fast and stopped drinking water. She ended up in hospital and died from renal failure. Drink at least 3 litres of water per day. More if you wear lots of clothing, live in a dry environment, eat salt and or are overweight as fat holds little water compared to muscle. Your body will love you for it and you’ll have better digestion, mental clarity, skin and physical performance.
Drink 1 litre upon rising and 1 litre 30 mins before meals.
5. They think they need to sleep less as a raw foodist
Well ‘Dr. such and such’ says they only sleep 3 hours per night because they eat raw… Hey! Do you want to end up in a mental ward like my friend that tried to do that? The body needs tons of sleep per night! We evolved in the equatorial regions where there is 12 hours of dark a night. If you can’t sleep properly its most likely you are under consuming carbohydrates and now your body cant produce enough serotonin so your sleep gets effected. Eat over 3000 calories a day from a carb rich, low fat raw vegan diet and watch your sleep quality improve out of site. Have a big breakfast and lunch and a lighter dinner and go to bed early.
6. They think they are ’emotional eaters’
Hey! You ever seen a spider emotionally eat? Look at cows and horses in nature, they eat all day! When humans are starved of simple sugars from fruit, they will keep eating and eating until they get simple sugars. We can just sit down and eat a meal of mangoes or make a big banana/date smoothie or we can just fight our ‘sweet tooth’ and then get real emotional and ’emotionally eat’ on candy, burgers, fries etc. So how to we end emotional eating? Eat sufficient calories from sweet fruit daily. Its that simple. Eat over 3000 calories a day from sweet fruits and you will never emotionally eat again in your life. Note that those who don’t believe this fact struggle all their life to control their eating habits. Starve, binge, starve, binge, starve..
7. They think calories don’t matter
Ok, if calories don’t matter then why eat anything with calories at all? We don’t go to the service station and not look how much gas we put in the tank – so why do we ignorantly eat and expect to go the distance when we have no real objective idea how much fuel we are putting in the tank? I’ve never met a successful elite athlete that didn’t know how many calories they needed and what that looked like in carbs per day. I’ve never met a successful raw foodist that didn’t know how many calories they needed each day and what that looks like in sweet fruit carbs per day. We teach our clients and forum members to learn calories from fruits. Not so they avoid getting too much but so they get enough! You gotta eat a lot of volume to get enough fruit. That’s great because I like eating lots of sweets for breakfast, lunch and dinner! 🙂
8. They think they don’t have to exercise
Most of the time raw foodists cant exercise because they are so fatigued from their calorie restriction, low carb and high fat raw diets. I don’t blame them, NOBODY is fit and active on a high fat diet. When we carb up for a few days, drink enough water and get enough sleep we will automatically be itching to live with more passion and a life of passion means a lot of physical movement be it dancing, sport, active labor, sex and or keeping up with our children.
9. They think they need to take drugs to become enlightened
The amount of chronic drug abuse I see in the raw ‘health’ movement is staggering. Bongs, magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote, san pedro’s cactus, LSD, cacao etc. Call it natural but at the end of the day they are still drugs and as a result has a negative impact on our health. I myself used a lot drugs so I can speak from both sides of the fence: clean vs drugged. Clean wins hands down. The truly natural highs one experiences from keeping their blood clean, body lean and mind sharp from following a high fruit, low fat raw vegan lifestyle with plenty of sleep, water, sun and fun make drugs look like a poor choice. I’ve seen many raw food friends develop negative personality traits from using these ‘healthy & natural’ drugs. Its interesting to note that the promoters of low fruit diets also are the biggest promoters of the ‘raw drugs’ and the reason is that people are so fatigued and depressed from eating low carb diets that they need some stimulants and drugs to escape the low energy reality that low carb diets provide.
10. Raw foodists think they need animal products for health
It’s no surprise that the majority of the people that promote a low fruit diet eventually go back to eating animal products in due time. Why? They simply ate such a low calorie diet that they failed to thrive and thought it was lack of protein or B12 or something. I like to ask people ‘how many grams of protein did you get as a raw vegan?’ They never know. Then I ask them ‘how many grams of protein do you get today?’ They never know. They fail to ask the raw vegan athletes what they are doing to succeed so well. They fail to learn basic human & nutritional sciences. Then they fail as a raw foodie and become outspoken about raw foods/vegan diets etc.
With b12 Ive never seen anyone raise their serum b12 and lower their homocysteine and urinary MMA from consuming raw or cooked animal products. I have seen many get food poisoning and end up in hospital as a result. We see that 39% of US citizens have low serum b12 levels. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2000/000802.htm
Science shows us that absorption, high stress, gastric issues and high fat diets can all create b12 deficiencies. Most people dont even know what their b12/homocysteine/urinary MMA levels were before they went raw vegan and then when they get tested and have some issues they are quick to jump to conclusion it was from being a ‘vegan’. I’ve trained with the fastest cyclists on earth including riders like Lance Armstrong and Cadel Evans and they ALL do b12 injections on a regular basis, as do a lot of Hollywood stars, as do I. My blood tests always show up healthy results as I do the right things for my health and avoid the pitfalls that unfortunately are all too common in the raw foods movement today.
Thanks for reading and remember, true friends tell you what you need to hear and business people tell you what you want to hear..
Harley, aka Durianrider is a fruitarian and founder of www.30bananasaday.com.
He is a vegan evangelist and has been known to eat up to 70 bananas in a day and cycle 515km in a day!