Anyone who has ever eaten a meal of raw fruit knows how intensely pleasurable this can be. Fruit requires little to no preparation (all you need to eat a banana is opposable thumbs). It is easy to eat and digests quickly, usually in just 30 minutes.
Best of all, fruit tastes great and completely satisfies the sweet tooth in the most healthy way possible.
Just like avocado and nuts, fruit is calorically dense. However, fruit is also high in volume, like vegetables. This means that a meal of fruit both provides enough calories AND enough volume to leave you completely satiated until the next meal.
Just Fruit?!?
The idea of eating only fruit for a meal is very strange to people. Much of this confusion stems from the fact that we grow up thinking of raw fruit as a snack or part of a dessert. The idea of eating more than a couple pieces of fruit in one sitting is completely foreign to us.
As a result, people who are new to a low fat, high fruit raw food diet often under eat on calories at first.
To make the transition easier for you, here is a simple example of a sufficient fruit meal...
*Fruit Meal*
Let's say you need 2000 calories a day and you like to eat 3 meals a day. If each meal is divided equally, one meal would be between 600-700 calories.
One medium banana contains about 100 calories. In order to consume 600-700 calories in one meal from bananas alone, you would have to consume 6 to 7 bananas.
And that's it! It really is that simple.
Of course, if eating a meal of only one type of fruit seems much too boring to you, there are many alternatives. You can combine your favorite fruits into a nice fruit salad. A popular choice for beginners is to blend fruits into a smoothie. This is an easy way to get enough calories from fruit.
Here is a delicious smoothie you can make in just a few minutes...
*Two Pears in a Peel*
* 5 bananas
* 2 pears
* 1 cup of water
Blend ingredients together and enjoy!
There are many different combinations you can make. You can also add greens, which will add some nice variety and counterbalance some of the sweetness.
Problems with Fruit
Many raw foodists believe that fruits should be severely limited, or even eliminated, because they contain simple sugars like fructose and glucose. These simple sugars are believed to lead to such ailments as diabetes and Candida.
First, I want to clarify that the sugar in fruit does not cause sugar metabolic disorders. It is an excess of fat in the body that coats the insulin, blocking it from reaching the sugar molecules. The excess sugar in the blood leads to a high blood-sugar level.
Without the excess fat, the insulin will reach the sugar molecules and transport them out of the blood and into the cells.
Second, there is a huge difference between the simple sugars found in fruit and the simple sugars found in processed foods. These refined sugars have been removed from whole foods (i.e. fruit, sugar cane) and further processed. They no longer contain any nutritional value whatsoever.
On the contrary, the sugars in whole fruit have not been processed and are accompanied by necessary water, fiber, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, phytonutrients, etc.
How Much Fruit?
I recommend that the majority of your calories come from fruit. The best way to determine how much is to simply eat sweet fruit until you are full. As a general guideline, our closest relatives the bonobos consume 95% of their calories from sweet fruit. The other great apes consume between 70-90% of their calories from fruit.
Dr. Douglas Graham, a well-known leader in the raw food movement, recommends in The 80/10/10 Diet that 80% of our calories come from simple carbohydrates in the form of fruit. You can check out this excellent book and the rest of Dr. Graham's top-quality catalog at FoodnSport.
On average, I consume between 85-90% of my calories from sweet fruit.
Take Action
You can get started today by simply eating all fruit for your next meal. Many people prefer to wait until breakfast, as it is the easiest meal to transition.
You could also begin your next meal with as much fruit as you can eat, and then finish the meal with your regular fare. Just be sure to wait at least 30 minutes between your two meals so that your body has time to fully digest the fruit.
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