How Much Is Too Much Fruit For Children

I often overhear parents talk about their children's habits and I'm fascinated.  Not just in what they eat but generally in how they behave.  

For me this is an insight into some of our natural instincts and behaviours before we get programmed into certain habits.

For example a work colleague told me that children often hug and kiss other children, even strangers. This is in sharp contrast to the boundaries adults seem to place on physical affection.  Perhaps this indicates we have lost a more huggy nature.  Human touch is after all vital to our health.

On seeing me eat a lot of fruit mothers often tell me that their children eat a lot of fruit or rather would eat  A LOT of fruit if they were allowed.  Often they are concerned that their child may be eating too much fruit.

I don't like to interfere with how a mother brings up her children so I don't force the pro-fruit view down their throat.

Today a lady at work said to me that her grand daughter could eat a whole packet of Grapes and that this was surely too much sugar.  The type of punnet she is talking about is probably about 300 calories worth of Grapes.  Of course it is not too much of anything and the child was just following it's natural instinct to eat sweet fruit until satisfied.

When every announcement on health is telling us to eat more fruit and vegetables why would anyone worry about their child eating too much?

I remember my own mother telling me to stop eating so many apples.  I then saw a man on TV say that he ate 3 apples a day and I asked why he was allowed 3 and I could only have 1.  

Anyway,  didn't respond to the lady but my thought was "what else should the child eat?"

That is my own thought now.  If I don't eat fruit, what else should I eat as my staple?  And why would I eat anything else?

The anti-sugar feeling that has grown up over the years among the public has somehow managed to affect how people view eating fruit.  I don't know why refined sugar and fruit ever got lumped together.  They are completely different animals.

Fruit contains fibre to help control the speed at which sugar is released into the blood stream and also contains anti-oxidants, phyto-nutrients, vitamins, minerals, water and everything else that is good in this world. 

I have had a number of experiences in which consumption of refined sugar has lead to me feeling depressed and alienated (often the next day).  This is my own reason for avoiding refined sugar.

But even though it is not a health food it is certainly not the enemy is always pointed out to be. Many people incorrectly link sugar with diabetes when it has been known for many years and confirmed in a number of studies that diabetes is caused by too much fat in the blood.

I often wondered why Coca Cola and other companies don't try to reverse the ill feeling towards sugar.  I assume they make too much money from "Diet" drinks to worry.

"Diet" drinks don't help anyone lose weight either but that's another story.

I hope the consensus will change and parents will allow their children to gorge on fruit and enjoy the vitality and good health that comes from it.  It would certainly be easier than trying to reverse the bad habit of eating too little fruit later in life.

I managed to reverse that habit but it takes a bit of effort.

If you want to learn more about this fruit eating life perhaps you would like to come to Edinburgh tomorrow for a Fruitluck at the Prince's Street gardens.  More details here:

Click Here For The Edinburgh Fruitluck Group

For now, eat fruit and prosper

Ronnie

Eat Fruit For Health Assurance

A man at work collapsed today.

I am not sure yet why he collapsed or what exactly happened but he was taken away in an ambulance.

Personally I have no doubt that the episode will be related to the diet that he and virtually all of my colleagues follow and have been following all their lives.

As children we are all trained how to eat.  We are told not to eat sweets before dinner as it will spoil our appetite.  I have heard at least one parent say that they will only make one dinner for their child and will not make an alternative if the child does not like it.

It should not be difficult to get our children to eat food but it is so because we are giving them food that does not in anyway fit their natural desires.  On top of this the food is not satisfying which leads them to find other food , usually sweet food, to satisfy their cravings.

Most children then go on to remain on the appalling diet which they were trained to eat and became addicted to.  The effect is immediate but the real effects start to show years later especially in moments like this.

Don't worry I didn't stand up and start raving about how if he had followed a low fat plant based diet then he wouldn't have collapsed.  I don't get on a soapbox much.

The workplace is an interesting place to be confronted with all of the latest diet ideas and the various denials people have about their diet and how they eat.

Today a lady came back from lunch with a protein bar.  A man sitting beside her pointed out that it had 12g of sugar in it and had 200 calories.  Shocked by this she decided not to eat it.  She then went on to eat a packet of meat for lunch.

This is something I have seen a lot.  Women in particular eating packets of processed meat for lunch.  Usually on some kind of no-carb or low carb fad diet.  Anyway I was interested in how many calories were in the packet of meat.  She told me she didn't know and that it was her lunch.

I don't really understand why you would count the calories in one food and not the other?

Another man at work was shocked at the 4 bottles of freshly squeezed orange juice I had bought and enquired on the number of calories.  It was around 2000.  I think they don't realise that this is my food and not just an uber snack on top of other food.

Getting back to the point I can imagine nothing more frightening than collapsing with no idea why or what had happened.  The fear of being in a body that was literally falling out from underneath me.

Pain is another big fear.  Ending up in pain, disabled, unable to move the body correctly and move independently through life.

I will choose to try to preserve my health as well as I can.

Fruit is the way to go for optimal health and happiness.

I want health ASSURANCE not INSURANCE.

Speak soon,

Ronnie

Discover Why Fruit Makes You Appreciate Life More

I've been really enjoying eating peas lately.

I've been eating them from large bags throughout the day.  We seem to have jumbo sized peas at the moment which is great.

They are perfectly "ripe" if that is the right word.  Peas should be eaten while still young otherwise they get very starchy and hard, sort of the opposite with fruit that goes from starchy to sweet.

This is a great example of the seasonality of eating a raw fruits and vegetables diet.  Foods come and go and there is a sense of specialness when something new hits the shelves or an old favourite comes into season.

I monitor red grapes pretty closely.  Very often the variety of  red grape that is on the shelf is "CRIMSON".  A delicious Grape when good of course but just not in the same league as "FLAME"

You start to notice these things when you eat a lot of fruit.  The variety, the name, where it is grown, colour shape and six etc.

At the moment it is CRIMSON that is on the shelves.  I prefer the normal green Thomson Grapes to the red crimson Grape which is often of less quality.

Flame Grapes are more round, almost perfect spherical balls.  Incredible stuff, look out for them.

The peas will probably disappear soon but its time to make the best of them and eat them in huge quantities.

There is a great lesson in this.  To take advantage of things while they last.  Perhaps we forget these bits of wisdom programmed into the cycles of nature by the fact that our food system is a permanent global summertime of stocked shelves. Most products are available all year.

The word "products" reminds me of this wonderful quote by Tim Van Orden:

"There are 2 types of food in the grocery store, produce and products.  The difference is the letter "H".  Products are for SHELF PRESERVATION.  Produce is for SELF PRESERVATION".

Awesome line, eh?

Don't tell me I don't offer you great value at this blog.

Anyway the fruits come and go, but they will surely be back.  We must enjoy them while we can, even mono eat them if that is your style.

After Woodstock I wondered if I really had made the most of the event.  All these awesome people that I had been missing all year and following on line and I don't know if I really got to see and speak to them as much as I perhaps should have.  You live and learn I guess.

One guy I did get to spend a little time with was Benjamin Benulis.  He goes by the name IronCladBen on Youtube.  I made a little interview with him that you can be taken to by following the link at the end of this post.

Ben is a guy I "met" on Youtube.  We comment on each other's videos, going back over a year at least.  He made a video years ago about doing 801010 in the corporate world.  Now he has packed that in to live the good life in California and study Chiropractic.  He is following his passion and calling and this is a great example to me.

It seems like many head to California for the good Fruity life.  It wasn't good enough for some who then headed to Hawaii for the even greater Fruity life.  My prediction is that Hawaii will be a huge fruit scene in a few years time....mark my words.

My own fruit scene is here in Glasgow.  Check out my group "Glasgow Fruitluck".  I will put a link at the end.  We don't have a meetup this weekend but there is a separate one in Edinburgh hosted by my friend Andy aka Juicefiend!  I hope to go and meet some people there.

The last group meeting had 6 new people.  I was pretty surprised by this however I had put a lot more work into getting people to come so this made sense.

Thats about it from me today, enjoy your peas and your fruits and your life and friends and everything else.  Comment below to let me know what you thought of this blog!

Yours In Fruitful Abundance!

Ronnie Ronster Ronstero Delicioso


Click Here For The Interview With Ben

Click Here For The Glasgow Fruitluck

"Nuts About No Nuts" and Fruitarian Teeth Issues

For many people within the Fruitarian community the starting point was the book "The 80/10/10 Diet" by Dr  Douglas Graham.

This book and the supporters of it have shaped the opinion of thousands of people around the world who are embracing a high fruit vegan diet.

Within the community and among many friends there is often an avoidance of nuts completely.  This may seem unusual seeing as nuts are a perfectly edible raw food staple but the problem is the high fat content.

80/10/10 recommends keeping the percentage of fat that make up total calories to stay lower than 10%.

This is hard to achieve if you snack on nuts as they pack in a huge amount of fat calories in a relative small volume of food.

Personally I also for a long time virtually ate no nuts and would feel the difference if I had them.  More recently in the last year I have had many occasions in which I binged on nuts, especially pistachios.

I'm not sure if it was stress or emotional eating or if I just wasn't eating enough fruit.  Perhaps I just liked the taste?  Whatever the reason I knew I was eating them in an addictive fashion as I often did not like the effect they had on me.  I would feel sluggish and unfocused mentally but would continue to go back to eating them in alarmingly large quantities.

More recently I haven't been going for the nuts as often.  They just don't draw me as much as they did before.  Maybe this is because my mum bought me a dehydrator and I have been using it to create all sorts of savoury raw vegan treats that have limited my craving for other dry salty snacks like the nuts.

Many raw food recipe books are filled with recipes that require nuts.  In response to this Jon Kozak a Canadian 811 raw fooder, quadruple Woodstock attendee and fitness coach has released a new book entitled:

"Nuts About No Nuts"

It is an excellent collection of nut free raw vegan recipes.  I recently caught up with him at the Woodstock Fruit Festival to speak about this book.  Here is a link to that video:

Click Here For The Interview At My Youtube Channel!

It almost seems like raw vegan recipes books are ten-a-penny and that people are releasing them left right and centre.  But this book seems to genuinely offer something fresh and new.

To purchase the book check out Jon's website:

Click here to go to Jon's site- www.doubleorganic.ca

I hope you enjoy the book and the recipes.


Teeth Issues

Much talk has happened recently about teeth issues within the fruity scene.  It is almost the dirty secret of the community that many people have had bad teeth problems.

Tim Van Orden quite publicly showed the damage to his teeth on his channel meanwhile Harley recently purchased a brand new Hollywood smile in Thailand (his teeth were not in good shape the last time I saw him).

Personally I went through a period of not brushing my teeth or being very lackadaisical with my regime.  I also avoided and sometimes did not follow the advice of dentists,

As a result, I have endured some damage on my teeth and had a period of toothache in one tooth that was sorted with a small filling.

However I already had some damage to my teeth before coming to this lifestyle and some damage that happened at a very young age.  My front two teeth have had false covers over them since I was around 12.  At the time the dentists were not sure why this was happening though the theory was acid erosion from acid reflux (acid coming up from the stomach to the throat), which I suffered from a lot as a child.

Recently another tooth that was the subject on dental treatment previously has started to fall out.  I was told I would have to get a root canal in the tooth and I did not enjoy that idea.  It had previously had a very deep filling put in that had fallen out.  A couple of dentists had done a bad job with the tooth which I believe has led to this point.  But maybe I should have just got the root canal.

I will head to the dentist soon and see what happens.

I really like Frederic Patenaude's information on teeth care on a raw vegan diet.  This lecture gives his story:

Click Here For Fred's Teeth Lecture

I have also listened to Don Bennet's information but I do not feel his information is right on this subject.

The biggest reversal in my dental issues has come since following the basic advice that we all know in the first place, which is to thoroughly brush the teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, particularly first thing in the morning.

Tooth decay is caused by the acidic waste products of bacteria that live in the mouth.  If the bacteria are at a manageable level then tooth decay will not occur.  However if they are out of control the inevitably the teeth will decay.

I also speculate that the nature of the Fruitarian diet (being virtually free of anti-bacterial substances like alcohol, salt, garlic, vinegar etc) give the bacteria an excellent condition to thrive in.

If we accept this as the cause then mechanical brushing of the teeth is our best solution so far found.

The only other option I can see is fasting (a complete abstinence from eating for a controlled period under supervision).  Perhaps this is why Dr Doug Graham and Loren Lockman, both with a history of having performed long fasts, have been able to maintain healthy teeth on this lifestyle while only brushing with water.

I think this, as with so many areas in this lifestyle, is still up for debate.  Until we have a dental expert who can look into it thoroughly we will not know exactly what is happening.  Each person has an individual experience.

Let me know your thoughts on these issues in the comments.

Thanks for reading,

Yours in fruitful abundance,

Ronnie

Dr Robert Lockhart- 70 Years Young On A Fruitarian Diet

I have had the pleasure to meet a lot of interesting and wonderful people in my time as a raw foodist.

Attending fruitarian raw vegan events around the globe has brought me in touch with many of the leaders in the raw food movement.

One man who has had a big impact on me is my friend Dr Robert Lockhart.

Dr Lockhart is a pioneer of the Woodstock Fruit Festival and has been on a raw food diet for nearly 30 years.  He is in great shape for a man of 70 and teaches not only about the benefits of the raw food diet but also about corrective exercises that can be used to help limit the chance of being a victim of the common back problems that people get as they age.

In his view, in the modern world our body spends too much time in the 3 common postures: sitting, standing and lying down.  In our primitive environment in which we would have had to climb trees for food and safety, our body would have been inverted or upside down more often and we would have had to hang from our arms more.

Dr Lockhart teaches how to handstand correctly and his daily exercise regime involves walking on his hands for the length of a football pitch.  Handstands and the use of the inversion table put the body upside down and temporarily reverse the direction in which gravity is acting on the spine.

Dr Lockhart talks about other topics that are seen as controversial such as dry fasting (a period of no eating and no drinking) and speaks about practising dry fasting when travelling on planes to lessen the impact of jet lag.

In person, Robert is a humble and interesting man who gets along with just about everyone.  He seems still keen to learn and does not try to come across as a know-it-all.

Originally born in Scotland, Robert now spends his time between his home of North Queensland Australia and his property in the Philippines.  He was the first person to export Durian from Australia and is an expert on fruit tree growing.

Seeing the health and fitness that Robert has maintained into his 70s was one of the big inspirations for me to try to stay on the raw food path for the longterm.  I hope to be in such good shape at his age.

I recorded this short interview with him and I hope you will enjoy it:

This Link Takes You To The Video Interview With Dr Lockhart

Yours in fruitful abundace,

Ronnie

Glasgow Fruitluck

I have been running a fruitluck in Glasgow for about 2 years.

So what is a "fruitluck" exactly?

Well, quite simply it is like a potluck in which fruit is brought to share instead of cooked food.  Usually if the weather is good it is a big picnic where fruit lovers can come together and enjoy the love of fruit together.

Most of the people that come are vegan and some are raw or high raw though anyone is welcome. Conversations often revolve around the lifestyle and what is going on in the Youtube world.

I have not made a big effort to promote the group apart from occasional Facebook posts.  It has taken me a few years to realise that this wasn't good enough.

So before this fruitluck I decided to put some effort into messaging people and sending out more emails to ask people to come.  It only took me maybe 30 mins.  This little bit of effort resulted in 6 new people turning up, which was completely unexpected.

We had 11 people in total.  Hopefully this is a good sign and I can continue to put more work and time into growing the group.

If you would like to check out the group sign up for updates at:

www.meetup.com/Glasgow-Fruitluck

I guess this is all in line with my feeling that I need to put more work into promoting all of the things I am doing, like my Youtube channel and the UK Fruit Festival.  A little bit of work goes a long way.  I especially think that taking the time to individually message people is very powerful.

On another note, I got home from Woodstock last week.  I haven't really had a good fruithaul since then so i have been eating dates, grapes, orange juice...usual staples for me if I am unprepared.

I have also been eating the "Kentuckified Cauliflower" recipe that Dr Doug Graham showed at one of his food demos at Woodstock.  This is really delicious and looks like this:

Click Here To See "Kentuckified Cauliflower"

The recipe is pretty simple.  Here is mine:

1.Blend together roughly equal volumes of tomatoes and celery.  

2. Blend in tahini (preferably raw) until it gets a little thick.  

3. Blend in your preferred herbs and spices, perhaps some mild chili powder for example.  

4. Cut cauliflower into florets and dip them into the sauce you have made.  

5. Place them on the dehydrator tray and put in the dehydrator for 2 hours at 135 (I guess that's fahrenheit).

For more stuff like this you may want to check out Doug's upcoming culinary skills class in Sedro Wooley, Washington.  More details can be found here:

Click Here For Information On FoodNSport Retreats  

I will need to go out today and get some more fruit.  Hopefully I can hit the large wholesale fruit market in Blochairn next week.  Being able to buy wholesale is a great advantage on this lifestyle.  Not only do you save money but you can buy in bulk quickly without waiting at a long checkout for the operator to weigh all of your bananas.

I am off to get on with the rest of the day,

Yours in fruitful abundance...

Ronnie

I’m attending a Meetup with Glasgow Fruitluck http://meetu.ps/2kdFN2