I Live on FruitEssie Honiball and T. C. Fry

Two fruitarians of more than 20 years each relate their experiences and researches on the fruitarian diet.Presenting proof that the fruitarian diet is not only nutritionally adequate in every respect, but is actually superior to any and all other foods humans may eat!

1108 Regal Row, Manchaca, Texas 78652-0609First Edition 1981 Copyright ® 1990T.C. Fry/Essie Honiball All rights reserved ISBN #1-55830-009-09No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent from the publisher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introductionby T. C. Fry

How and Why I Became a Fruitarianby T. C. Fry

Forewordby Essie Honiball

CHAPTER 1How I became a fruit-eater by Essie Honiball

CHAPTER 2/ Live on Fruit Questions and answers, 1958-1973

CHAPTER 3The transitional dietThe birth of a new eating habit Questions and answers, 1973-1979

CHAPTER 4What others say about the diet

CHAPTER 5Research yields bombshell of a surprise.Paradise diet uncovered by scientist

CHAPTER 6Is an all-fruit diet unhealthy?Some charges made against fruits and fruit-eaters

CHAPTER 7Requirements that our natural foods must meet

INTRODUCTION

This volume presents the case for fruitarianism through the voice of two of its foremost exponents.

Fruitarianism is quite controversial, especially as the medical and junk food industries are aligned against it.

The junk food industries want you to follow the basic five food eating plan. Their thrust is to sell you their products.

The foremost killer of our children is cancer. They are the victims of the junk food industry! Some of them have never eaten any fruits or vegetables in the raw state. Junk foods are all very carcinogenic on several counts:

1. All are cooked! The deranged products of cooking are carcinogenic in themselves!

2. Most cooked fare is condimented with such things as salt, vinegar, oregano, garlic (isothiocyanate), hot pepper (capsicum and cayenne), black and white pepper (piperine), and numerous other carcinogenic herbs and spices.

3. Heated oils as in frying are carcinogenic!4. In the fifth category of foods promoted by the junk food industry are such

things as white sugar, oils, butter, syrups, jams, wines, beers and other carcinogenic fare.

5. All animal products are unwholesome, cooked or raw!This book not only informs you about our natural diet, but its great

beneficence in our lives.Our earth is a dying earth with more than 50,000 acres per day being

added to our deserts! Almost all this is occurring because of the world's love affair with disease-causing animal products, legumes and grains.

If we all stopped using grains and animal products, destruction of our rain forests would cease. Grain-growing would no longer erode and deplete our soils. Instead, if we ate fruits and vegetables, about 85% of the world's lands would be retired to rebuild through re-mineralization, plant wastes, and new tree growth.

Fruitarians can live well on about 1/14th of an acre of fruits and vegetables, whereas conventional grain and animal product eaters require well over an acre per person. Worse yet, animal products, legumes, and grains are destroying the health of our people! Fruit eaters live in exuberant sickness-free health!

T. C. Fry

HOW AND WHY I BECAME A FRUITARIANBy T. C. Fry

Since boyhood I have been guided by this motto: "Truth is my handmaiden. Wherever she leads, there will I go."

Another aspect of this dedication is another guideline that I observe: "It is incumbent upon me to follow the dictates of truth upon discovery."

In 1970 I was a principal in a recording/mail order record/cassette club known as Musical Heritage Society. I was an avid football fan. On Thanksgiving Day in 19701 arose at 6:00 AM and, in view of the long wait until the football game or even before my family stirred, I decided to select some books from among several thousand that I had acquired over the years that I had never got around to reading.

Among the six books that I selected was Dr. Herbert M. Shelton's Superior Nutrition. I thought I would get that "old food faddist" out of the way first. But I had no sooner gotten into the introductory material than I realized that I was reading some sterling truths!

I spent the rest of that day reading and rereading that book. I was so captivated I ignored football altogether. The following day I went out to about ten health food and book stores. I bought over 400 books, netting among them about three more books by Dr. Shelton.

While following the program I lost from a roly poly 200 pounds at 5'6" down to 126 pounds in about four months. Even though I was on a heavy exercise program, I still lost the weight. After being at 126 for

about three weeks, I started gaining weight on the very same diet with the very same regimen on which I had lost the weight. Within two months I was at an energetic and very strong 155 pounds. Now, twenty years later at 64 years of age, I look like a case of retarded development - I'm still very active and quite athletic.

You may experience some very uncomfortable symptoms if you undertake a fruitarian diet. Those who suffer symptoms, and about 60% do, may experience weakness, nausea, dizziness, headaches, vomiting, gassiness, itchiness, watery and puffy eyes, and a variety of other discomforts. These symptoms evidence a massive house cleaning. When you make body improvements, the body detoxifies, goes into a catabolic stage (thus causing drastic weight loss), and begins needed repairs. However, weight gain is usually not experienced until detoxification is more or less complete. Don't give up the all-fruit diet just because of these symptoms. On the other hand, you may wish to make a gradual change over a period of months, thus escaping some of the more intense crises that can occur.

In conjunction with a predominantly raw food dietary of mostly fruits, I started studying the sciences of health and nutrition in great depth from the beginning. I had to know the whyfore of every subject in which I took an interest.

In my researches, studies, and reflections, I came up with further truths that decreed fruitarianism as the only way of eating natural to humans. All non-fruit eating is a perversion, even though it may be of relatively innocuous fare such as lettuce, celery, broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, cauliflower, and other vegetables that can be eaten raw.

While vegetables are very poor in our primary need, glucose, all of the above yielding none besides broccoli and cauliflower, they are very rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins.

We do not require vegetables in our diet. Besides yielding practically none of our most needed nutrient, glucose, the nutrients are unneeded. For if you eat sufficiently of fruits to meet your caloric needs, you'll simultaneously meet all your needs for vitamins, mineral matter, amino acids (proteins), and essential fatty acids.

Why should you eat vegetables at all if you don't like them? If you meet all your needs from fruits, that is enough. And enough is all that you need.

In this book you'll find the exciting narrative of Ms. Essie Honiball who has been a fruitarian for more than 30 years.

In 1971 the fruitarian movement was so rife in South Africa that the University of Pretoria undertook controlled studies of fruitarianism. Their object was to destroy this fad.

The experiment was made amongst two control groups. Ms. Honiball participated in the study. The health of each group was assessed at the beginning. One group continued to eat conventionally, and the other group undertook a fruitarian diet with some nuts.

Well, some very remarkable things began to happen. The control group living conventionally had many diseases and continued to get worse. The control group on fruits had many of the same diseases. But instead of getting worse on the fruit diet, everyone started getting better! Before the experiment ended, the fruit-eating control group was practically free of disease. And Ms. Honiball became a national celebrity instead of a food faddist. She tells her story dramatically further along.

Living On The All-Fruit Diet In AmericaIn observing the all-fruit diet, I have had a broad variety of experiences in

supplying myself.And I've been through the gamut of criticisms. Many of my peer critics have

died. Unfortunately, this has included about ten of my brothers, a sister, aunts, uncles, and in- laws. And it has included such noted writers as Paavo Airola (we had an ongoing feud), Hannah Allen, and James Fixx. Fixx had a love affair with conventional fare and wouldn't believe me that he could be ruining himself by eating conventionally. Airola and Allen both insisted on cheese very heavily in their diet. Airola paid for this with a stroke that killed him at age 64. And Hannah Allen died at age 81 of cancer.

All of them criticized me severely for advocating fruitarianism.

Airola and Allen made charges which were responded to by some of my articles appearing herein.

Analysis of My DietBecause I ate occasional salads, many have said I was a vegetarian

(meaning I was a vegetable eater) and not a true fruitarian. Since the word vegetarian merely means an eater of foods that give rise to "liveliness," I am, indeed, a vegetarian, but I also lay claim to being a fruitarian! I started assessing my eating and I came up with this:

I eat about eight pounds of food daily. Its caloric content is about 1,800 calories. That is adequate to meet my energy needs and maintain my weight. Of this intake I eat of lettuce, nappa cabbage, cabbage and other vegetables about four to five times weekly. By weight, my average intake per salad meal is about two pounds or 32 ounces. Of this, only five ounces of vegetables are taken, or a total of about 20 ounces per week! Most of my salads are of fruits! Such things as tomatoes, avocados, red peppers, lemon juice, grapefruit juice, cucumbers, tomatillos, etc. constitute the bulk of my salads! 20 to 25 ounces of greens or vegetables per week in a fruit diet weighing over 850 ounces amounts to less than three per cent! Even with the intake of some nuts and seeds on occasion (about five pounds per year), I am still a fruitarian.

Getting fruits has never really been a problem. I eat most heavily in the year of bananas. They're always available. I eat citrus fruit the year around. Likewise, I eat grapes and apples most of the year. But I also eat strawberries and other berries, figs, mulberries, loquats, persimmons, watermelons, cantaloupes, mangos, papayas, plums, peaches, apricots, and a host of other fruit, including considerable of dried fruits. My dried fruit eating consists of dates, raisins, figs, bananas, pineapple, peaches, apples, and other goodies.

I've always been able to procure all that I've wanted in the way of fruits. I've never been in a "foodless" situation for lack of fruits.

There are occasions when I've been offered dishes contrary to my dietary. I always thank the offeree and voice my wish to eat what is being offered: "I sure would like to tackle that, but I'm on a special diet and I don't dare." My hostess invariably wants to know what she can get me and I usually end up eating luscious fruits!

As a fruitarian you should have no real difficulty supplying yourself. I find it no problem at all to load up on fruit at the super market and carry it with me on trips, even airplanes.

Remember, what you buy with your dollars is your vote for what you're buying. If you buy junk, it will bring more junk to the marketplace. If you buy fruits and vegetables, your vote will bring more fruits and vegetables to the marketplace.

Fruit eating is the way to go because:1. Fruit is absolutely essential to highest level health. Conventional eating

results only in sicknesses, diseases, and impaired performance levels.

2. Fruit eating saves our earth by reducing land usage by over 90%! Further, fruit growing helps build, not destroy our soils.

3. Conventional ways of eating are causing the desertification of our earth as well as disastrous soil erosion.

I'm sure that which follows will inspire you to undertake fruit eating as your primary fare. And, inasmuch as you do not wish to suffer sicknesses and diseases, all the mandatory reasons you need are afforded as well.

FOREWORD

I am sitting at my desk and in front of me are all the friendly letters with enquiries about the fruit diet, a diet I have been following since 1958.

There were enquiries in the past too, but whereas enquiries initially came from people who were surprised to hear that one could indeed live on fruit alone, that the food of Paradise is no longer a fairy tale or allegory, that the housewife of the future can look forward to less household drudgery, better health for herself and her family, and a more economical way of life, the enquiries are now coming from people who have already embarked upon the great adventure of rejuvenation, renewal and a return to the natural food which Nature so richly provides.

However, to change habits which are so deeply rooted as are our eating habits, habits which originated so far back in our past and have become part of us physically, psychologically and socially, requires faith and daring.

I am not surprised at all the enquiries from people who are looking for knowledge, advice and comradeship. Moral support and company are more than welcome, as this road "back to the food of Eden" is still fairly unknown and not without its challenges.

The reader should bear in mind that what I am writing is personal and subjective, and arises out of my own experience and that of others on the diet with whom I have been in touch through the years. I am no scientist; nor am I an authority on the subject of fruit as a human food. I am not a doctor who can heal the sick, and I cannot prescribe remedies or make predictions. I can only share my experience of the diet with you and offer suggestions. If these are of value to you, I shall be pleased.

As a desperate person I had to venture to be able to gain, but to me the fruit diet was no short cut to health or happiness. Without self-examination, discipline and hard work I would not have achieved the results and enjoyed the health I now enjoy.

It is very gratifying to see how much interest there is today in this way of life. I appreciate all the letters, and I hope I succeed in giving vision and perspective to a subject which is still new and strange to many.

Essie Honiball 28 Jordaan Street Rawsonville January 1979

CHAPTER 1How I became a fruit-eater

One does not easily cast aside established habits almost overnight and venture into new fields. This is precisely what I did in 1958 when I, after a three-day water fast, started living on fresh fruit and nuts. That was twenty years ago, and I have never regretted the step.

One does not do such things without good reason. My reason was that I was desperate. The cause of my desperation is a long story of intense suffering over which I have long since drawn a veil. Suffice it to say that in 1958 my life had reached a very low ebb and that I was a physical and mental wreck. Good health and happiness evaded me and there was no relief in sight. The fruit diet was simply a final straw which I grasped in a moment of despair, little knowing how drastically that desperate deed would affect my life.

The name of Cornelius Valkenburg de Villiers-Dreyer plays a major part in my story. Although he was a South African by birth, he spent much of his life abroad, where he worked tirelessly at his great life's task, human nutrition. This remarkable man was not a trained scientist, but he had a superior mind and extraordinary powers of perception.

He was already 76 years old when I met him through a member of his family Mrs. Gertrude Rorke. He was a fine example of what the fruit diet could do for one and this, more than words, persuaded me to adopt the diet. In spite of advanced years he showed no sign of "age", either physical or mental. He was dynamic and fit. I was subsequently married to him and until his sudden death after a fall and a brain haemorrhage, I never once saw this vital man out of sorts, depressed or ill. If I was impressed by his physical health, I was even more so by his honesty, courage, determination, serenity and mental clarity. It was not at all difficult for me to place my life in the hands of such a person.

A coincidence led to my becoming the guinea-pig for a unique experiment which was destined to make a breakthrough for the fruit diet. At the time that I sought his help, Cornelius was living in isolation, totally immersed in the formulation of a hypothesis at which he worked throughout his life. Fate probably decreed that when the experiment was ready to be conducted, a suitable human guinea-pig would come to the fore, someone who was prepared to offer herself and submit to relentless discipline for such a long-term experiment on a diet of fruit.

In those years something of this kind was totally unheard of, both socially and scientifically. It was "evil". Cornelius de Villiers-Dreyer took no chances. To him it was a serious matter and he knew exactly what he wanted to do and why. Everything was planned to the minutest detail and the preparatory work had been done. He had by then already tested the diet on himself and others, with favourable results. These results were equally favourable. His knowledge had been acquired over a long lifetime of observation. He, as no doubt few other pioneers before and after him, believed in the excellence of fruit as a

human food and endeavoured almost fanatically to prove this. No resistance, of whatever kind, would have stopped him.

Cornelius de Villiers-Dreyer was not interested in money, and did not profess to be a doctor. He helped all who came to him with their problems and in so doing added to his knowledge of the diet.

When I joined the experiment, I was in a precarious state of health. I was already so weak that it was only with the greatest effort that I could do my job (I was, ironically enough, a lecturer in physical and health education at a teacher's training college). Although I had been cured of tuberculosis, my body was wasting away like a diseased plant and I could do nothing to halt this process. Part of my problem was that I had taken medicine over a long period of time and, no matter what diet I tried, my deterioration remained alarming. My mass dropped to below danger point, my vitality was a cause for concern and I was plagued by troublesome pains, nausea, skin rashes, insomnia and loss of appetite.

When I started the fruit diet, I was of course unaware of Cornelius's experiment. I simply wanted to be released from my misery, as it was no joy to have to waste away so slowly and so painfully. After a three-day fast, during which I drank two glasses of distilled water every hour, I took my first step on the long road, and from then onwards fruit and nuts would be my diet, with no medication and no vitamin preparations.

Those weeks were the most trying. Instead of making progress, I became weaker and my mass dropped right down to 31.3 kg. I was just skin and bones and looked like the victim of a concentration camp. I fainted regularly and when I wanted to get up out of a chair I fell flat on my face. It was impossible for me to climb stairs, until Cornelius taught me the secret of correct breathing. My ears sang and pains came and went throughout my body. At times cramps made my body go rigid from head to toes, but Cornelius had an answer to every problem.

I was very clearly a case for hospitalisation and not someone who should be working at a responsible job. But I obstinately refused to go to bed for, if I did so, the diet, which had become an obsession with me, would have failed. My family and friends were ready to take me to hospital, and I knew that this kind of diet, because of its extremeness and the fact that it was unknown, would simply not be tolerated by them. I therefore had to keep going, at all costs. In that crisis hour I learnt to pray and fast. My diet consisted of three fruits a day, one every seven hours. Apart from that, I had only water and more water. Naturally, I still craved the old, favourite foods to which my body had been accustomed for so many years. I used to enviously watch people in cafes enjoying that were denied me. But the rules of the experiment were unalterable and there was absolutely no question of taking liberties. Cornelius showed no mercy to himself and even less to me. To him his whole life's work was at stake, and for me it was my very life.

It was with the greatest earnestness that he watched over me and taught me daily to stay on my feet until the next time I could see him. I learnt the

value of oxygen, and saw how much strength it enabled me to develop. I had to do breathing exercises each day from the time I awoke until I went to bed.

This was even more important than the food I ate. With the help of breathing exercises I was able to do my job, albeit with great effort; but I was not absent from work for a single day.

After a month I was still very weak, but the worst was over and my unsightly skin rash and sinus pains had disappeared. This meant progress and gave me courage for what lay ahead. The miracle of the diet was, however, that I could indeed keep going in this condition.

In the course of time the reactions which must of necessity accompany such a sudden change of diet diminished and occurred less frequently, until they disappeared after a few years. According to Cornelius's hypothesis my bloodstream had been purged of the substances (or "misplaced material", as Cornelius called it) that had polluted it and caused my illness, and my body with increasingly positive results started functioning on the new fuel and building material it was being given.

To rebuild a sick and degenerated body, as mine was in 1958, on a diet of fruit and nuts only, was no easy task and could not be accomplished in a day; but the miracle was that this product was able to halt the progressive degeneration and start a process of regeneration.

After Cornelius and I had been married, he withdrew me from normal life and in my isolation I was transformed. Not only did I acquire a new body, but also a new outlook on life, for what is the use of having a healthy body when there is still lovelessness, depression and despair in one's heart?

There, in undefiled nature, away from society's complexities, I found my direction in life and made a new start. It surprised me how little there was in my life which did not need to be reformed radically. Far away from any association with the things I had been used to all my life, and free from any temptation, Cornelius could teach me the joys of the fruit diet.

Later on my sleeping pattern and my appetite returned to normal. In fact, my appetite was so good that I was embarrassed about the amount of fruit I could eat. I was also able to mix fruit and eat my fill of fruit such as avocado pears, which had initially been too oily, or pineapple, which had stung my mouth at first. My mass started increasing. So, whereas I had at first lost mass on the fruit diet, I, without changing my diet, started regaining mass. I could walk almost normally and climb stairs more easily. Most of my discomfort and pain had disappeared.

A year later, when I returned to my family and friends, they could hardly believe their eyes. The person who had greeted them a year previously had been a living wreck who had been deeply depressed. Now she was in excellent health, full of vitality, suntanned, full of the joys of life and looked a good ten years younger!

When my husband passed away at the age of 78 years on the 11th of August 1961, I was deeply immersed in his thoughts and strivings. On his deathbed I promised him that I would keep up the experiment until it attracted

scientific interest, even if this took a whole lifetime to achieve. That was his last wish, and I am grateful that I could fulfill the wish of a courageous pioneer.

Thanks to Cornelius I was at that time fully equipped to deal with any problem which might arise. He left no aspect of the road ahead untouched and I was schooled in self-discipline as never before in my life. If it had not been for that, I would not have been here today to tell this story.

I owe my recovery to Cornelius de Villiers-Dreyer and his knowledge of the fruit diet. What I achieved was largely achieved through his knowledge and ideas.

On the 12th of August 1961 the pioneer of the fruit diet was laid to rest in a modest grave. Only ten years later was his last wish fully realised. Through the agency of Prof. B.J. Meyer of the University of Pretoria and his research team, human guinea-pigs who followed the fruit diet were scientifically studied, with results which have already been published.

Those were years of great challenge. I was alone and had to return from my life of isolation to a more normal existence, where I soon discovered that my eating habits did not meet with approval scientifically or socially. I also had to be confronted again with temptation, for one's body still craves the old food to which it was formerly accustomed, and not the new food to which it still has to become fully accustomed.

I could write volumes on those years, full of anecdotes about incidents that were amusing or frustrating. Scientists' opinions varied, but all of them warned me to abandon my crazy diet, and held up everything from deficiency diseases to decalcification of the bone as the possible consequences of my diet.

At times temptation overwhelmed me, so that I recklessly started eating other foods. At such times my willpower disappeared and my body hungered for everything I had almost forgotten. By fasting and even, once, by spending some time in the mountains, I came to my senses and could resume the ex-periment.

But those problems were nothing compared with my social problems. The reactions which my strange and "abnormal" diet and behaviour evoked varied from shock to indignation, and from frustration to disbelief. At best people tolerated their eccentric guest. Imagine how a hostess feels when one of her guests does not touch a thing, from the hors-d'oeuvres to the dessert. The reactions of shock, ridicule and derision which I unleashed wherever I went, caused me all kinds of insurmountable frustrations. At first I tried to justify myself. One can do this for a month or even a year, but it soon becomes a nightmare and one decides rather to say nothing. Then I kept myself apart, but the harder I tried, the more I became a talking point.

Social withdrawal and isolation were inevitable for in social life being able to join in the conversation is not enough for acceptance; one also has to join in the activities of the group and, due to the strict rules of the experiment, it was just not possible, even on isolated occasions, for me to conform. Social isolation started taking its toll and I became the victim of psychosomatic disturbances. I was like a child whose examination fears brought on an attack

of asthma. I developed pains and nausea through fear of social challenges.You might be able to imagine what a glad day it was in my life when Prof.

B.J. Meyer took me under the wing of science, for the tests not only held great benefits for mankind, but also released me from loneliness, frustration and tension. Therefore, when I returned to earth as a kind of Rip van Winkle after the tests, I was surprised to find that the social climate had changed completely and that it was no longer strange for anyone to live on fruit and raw foods. So many others had also adopted this diet.

I also made other interesting discoveries. I could, for example, stop again once I had eaten ordinary food. There were no longer any cravings for my old diet. My body had completely accepted the fruit diet. In fact, I was deeply disappointed in the old diet, for compared with the sweet and poignant taste of fruit, it no longer appealed to me. I also started longing for the simplicity of the fruit diet and when symptoms such as a sore throat and headaches reappeared, I there and then decided to continue with the fruit diet. I also decided to become more flexible in order to live within the bounds of the times I was living in.

Today I still live virtually exclusively on fruit. My present husband was kind enough to join me as a fruit eater rather than endure his eccentric wife's cooking. And wherever we go, fruit is laid on for us, and we in turn do our best to make the adjustments necessary for social acceptance.

Extract from a talk given during the second anniversary of the birth of the fruit industry on Saturday, 23 August 1975, at the Fruit and Fruit Technology Research Institute, Stellenbosch.

CHAPTER 2I live on fruit Questions and answers, 1958-1973

The diet on which I have lived since 1958 is so simple that it appears almost laughable in a time of complicated diets — I live on fresh fruit and nuts. I eat this food for breakfast, lunch and supper. I eat it at every festivity, dinner or braai, and it also makes up my Christmas dinner. Instead of cocktails, tea and coffee I drink fresh fruit juices. This only varies according to the seasons and each year when a fruit reappears in season I feel as if I am welcoming back a dear friend after a long absence. Fresh fruit is the food with which I regained my health, and on which I have lived happily and healthily since 1958.

I do not enjoy processed fruit. The joy of the fruit diet lies precisely in the unique flavour of every fresh fruit. No two kinds of fruit taste or smell alike; even two fruits from the same tree differ in taste. This diet appeals to the senses. Fruit is attractive to look at, pleasant to smell, and its sweetness pleases the palate. Fruit is hygienic in its natural peel. As soon as fruit is dried, stewed, baked or canned, or preservatives or flavourings are added, the diet becomes less attractive to me. Then it no longer tastes like fruit, and I am back where I started — in the world of complicated and mixed-up tastes and smells, which I find confusing.

If fruit is mixed with salty, sour, bitter or other flavouring agents, it also loses its appeal for me, for it is the very simplicity of the diet which I enjoy, and to my mind the taste of fresh fruit which has ripened on the tree cannot be bettered.

Why should I eat processed fruit which is less healthy and less attractive to my senses when I can enjoy fresh fruit which is far healthier and pleasanter? If I cannot get sweet, ripe fruit, and have to depend on fruit which has been picked while green and left to ripen in trays or boxes, I sometimes add a little honey, but this happens very rarely. This diet does not usually need additives.

Do you eat vegetables?Vegetables, whether I eat them raw or cooked, are tasteless as far as I am

concerned. There are definitely no substitute for fruit as regards taste and value. I can live on fruit alone, but not on vegetables.

I generally eat raw vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and green beans by way of exception, and this is usually for social reasons or when the fruit available is of a poor quality. The salad dressing I use consists of orange or lemon juice, celery, parsley, avocado and banana mixed in a blender. To this I add some vegetarian salt. Vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin cannot be eaten raw, and when they are cooked they need to be seasoned to improve their taste.

I cannot say I experience any adverse effects from the raw vegetables I occasionally eat. They may even make a valuable contribution to my diet. It is simply that vegetables do not appeal to me after the sweet taste of fruit. However, vegetables have helped me to make the switch from my former diet to a fruit diet, and to be accepted socially.

Do you eat avocado pear?Avocado pear forms an important part of my diet, when in season. As far as

taste goes, this fruit is quite unlike other fruit. It is oily, green, and not sweet. In the first few years of the diet I could not live without it. I remember that I once drove 80 kilometres in search of avocados.

Right at the start, when I was very ill and weak, I could not eat avocado pear. Just thinking of its oiliness made me feel nauseous, but as time went by I ate more and more avocados, sometimes as many as four or more medium-sized ones a day. In recent years I have eaten much less of this fruit, one or two a day at the most, and sometimes none for long periods.

What kinds of fruit do you eat?I eat all the fruits that appeal to my sense of taste, and for that reason I eat

everything but sour fruit. I no longer enjoy sour tastes. When I became a fruit eater, I could not at first eat pineapple. But that was through no fault of the pineapple's! Whenever I ate this fruit my mouth stung so much that my palate bled. Only after my blood had been purified was I able to eat pineapple again. Now I eat as much as I like, with no detrimental affects.

Do you eat nuts?I eat all kinds of fresh nuts which are obtainable, but prefer not to eat

roasted, salted or sugared nuts. My favourite nuts are pecans and almonds, which are high in food value and are very tasty. I also enjoy other nuts, including coconut, preferably fresh or dried. I usually eat about half a cup of nuts a day, but there are times when I do not eat any.

Do you mix fruit?At the time I started the diet I was very ill, and my body could not tolerate

more than one kind of fruit per meal, and even this was too much at times. So for a long time I lived on, for example, a peach for breakfast, a pear for lunch and about twelve grapes at night. For the rest I drank water. It was then that I realised how little food one could survive on if the need arose.

Later on I started eating more and more fruit, and also mixed it. At first I felt better when I did not mix different types of fruit. At that early stage I still became tired at times. It helps if one can then at least eat a different kind of fruit each mealtime. So, for example, I ate figs and pears for breakfast, a slice of watermelon and nuts for lunch, and at dinner time I had two other kinds,

such as grapes and plums. Although I could not eat avocado pear at first, it later became a part of each meal. It takes time for one's body to adjust to a new diet.

After my baptism of fire I had no adverse effects when I mixed fruit as much as I wished. Nor did I get bored eating the same foods over and over again, day after day and year after year. Today I sometimes eat only one kind of fruit at each meal, and sometimes two or more kinds. It makes no difference to me how much fruit I eat at a time or how many kinds I mix; I eat until I have had enough and therefore never go hungry.

How often do you eat?When I have guests I eat three meals a day with them. My husband and I

also eat three meals a day, but not at set times. Occasionally I eat fruit between meals, just for the fun of it, or I drink a glass of fruit juice, but I do not like eating or drinking between meals. Three meals a day are more than adequate. Continual eating considerably lessons one's enjoyment of a meal. But when I am alone, I eat only when I am hungry, as all food tastes better when one is really hungry.

I sometimes do not eat for a whole day when I am not hungry enough. If one's body functions well, one does not feel hungry all day long. Constant cravings for food are largely the result of incorrect eating and deficiencies in a diet, but no deficiency is made up by the wrong foods. The chemical balance contained in fruit is all human beings need.

When I am alone, I do not give any thought to breakfast, lunch or supper. I lose track of time. This is a pleasant way of living, for then your day is not broken up into sections between meals and you can go on doing your work without interruptions until your stomach starts calling for fuel or building ma-terials. As soon as the food has satisfied the needs of the body, the appetite and hunger disappear and one feels satisfied. Then the next meal comes only when one's body gives the signal.

When I land in an orchard with delicious, fresh, ripe fruit and I may eat as much as I wish, well, I enjoy myself and eat my fill. But this type of overeating is exceptional, and has no detrimental effects.

How and where do I eat my fruit meals?It is strange, but kitchens and dining rooms play no great part in my fruit

eating. When I have guests I naturally eat with them at the dinner table. Otherwise I eat where the mood takes me. A plate of fruit — as much as I think I need — a knife, spoon, sometimes a fork, and a sunny or shady nook indoors or out of doors, where there is something to appeal to the senses (flowers, a painting, birds, beautiful scenery, sometimes soothing music), go far towards making a meal a feast. I eat on my lap, or at any handy table, sometimes even at the swimming pool when I am out swimming. In winter I sit at the fireside or in front of the heater. When there is a good programme, I eat

in front of the television set.Today I would easily manage in a home without a kitchen or a dining room,

with just a sink and a small place to store my fruit. But an orchard is my favourite eating place. There is nothing to beat eating fruit straight from the tree. I once spent a year on a fruit farm in the mountains and each morning at sunrise I took a long walk and climbed the mountain. I used to take a dip in the chilly mountain stream and then stroll among the trees helping myself to the tastiest fruit. That is my idea of heaven on earth. For the rest of the day I could work without giving food a thought and it was only at night that I felt hungry again.

This eating pattern requires little preparation and little cleaning up afterwards. There are no greasy plates, pots or pans to scour, and no table to set. Meals can be served in different ways, and fruit can be eaten in a variety of ways. I usually prefer eating fruit in its natural form. That is because one tends to overeat if one constantly looks for greater variety and dishes that become more and more complicated. Nothing is as wonderful as the simplicity of this diet. Take an orange. You can peel it and eat the segments. You can eat it out with a spoon once you have cut a hole in the top and cut the flesh from the rind with a sharp knife. It can be sucked as children enjoy doing, and the juice can be used over salads or in mixed juice. And no two oranges taste the same.

An apple can be peeled or eaten with peel and all. There are countless ways of making each meal enjoyable, and all of these ways make the fruit taste different each time. The best of all is the knowledge that this food is promoting good health.

I always look for the fruit that birds have pecked at. Birds have a wonderful ability to pick out the tastiest fruit on a tree. In the course of time one also learns to tell which fruit is the best. Large fruits are not necessarily the tastiest.

I remember that we once lived on a farm where there was a very old orchard, far away from our house. Those old trees, which had been grown from pips and whose tap-roots had never been removed, had never seen pruning shears, sprays or irrigation water. The orchard at home was watered, fertilised, sprayed with insecticides and pruned. The trees were large and luxuriant and the harvest was plentiful. The fruit was a sight for sore eyes. But the beautiful fruit did not appeal to us. We used to walk a long way each day to the old, neglected orchard which had, season after season, defied the elements and yielded its harvest. The fruits were small but as sweet as honey and full of flavour. You could pick them and let them dry out in the house, and whenever you entered the house you could smell these fruits a long way off, while the large fruits were by comparison very tasteless and soon rotted when left to dry. They never dried out healthily and were a feast for insects and parasites.

A fruit eater migrates like a bird to the tastiest fruit, for it is this fruit that is also the healthiest. I therefore take great pains to look for the right fruit myself and do not mind paying for good fruit. That is the one thing I do not try to stint

myself on.

How much do I eat every day?I eat until my hunger has been satisfied. I thus never "leave the table"

feeling hungry. When I was sickly and weak and could eat only three fruits a day, I, because I had given up meat, used to look on enviously while others enjoyed their food. I remember that I was still very confused at that time. At first my appetite disappeared, but it gradually returned. At that stage I used to buy books and magazines just to page through them and admire all the scrumptious dishes advertised in them.

However, I did not touch other foods and kept strictly to the rules. I was hungry very often at that stage, especially for the forbidden fruit. When I had overeaten, I was sick or felt so bad that I decided rather to keep to the rules. My body was simply not able to consume more food than was required to keep it functioning.

Mass loss was a blessing in disguise and I simply did not bother about weakness and weight loss. Once my health started improving, my appetite also improved and a few months later I had such a hearty appetite that I felt quite ashamed of myself, for I could without any effort at all eat half a tray of peaches at one sitting, in addition to four avocado pears and some nuts. But as time went on my needs became more normal.

My body has now adjusted to the diet and I go far on a few fruits. Nevertheless, I eat about fifteen medium-sized fruits a day. I supplement this with nuts. Sometimes I eat less fruit, but very often I eat much more. The guinea-pigs for the scientific tests had to eat a good deal more fruit than I to comply with scientific criteria for a good fruit diet. I found these quantities too large, but I am a small person, with an average mass of 48-50 kg.

In my starvation days my mass was 31.3 kg. I looked like the victim of a concentration camp. Of the thirty odd portions of fruit which had to be eaten, 250 grams had to consist of avocado pear and 70 grams of nuts. I was so weak that, if I did not take a few deep breaths before I tried to get up out of a chair, I could not lift myself. Sometimes I even fell forward flat on my face. I also had to pause for deep breaths on each stair I climbed, or I did not have the strength to raise my foot to the next step. I simply could not lift my feet — they were like lead.

Over the years I learnt the value of correct breathing and how much strength oxygen gives to the body. Today I am in excellent hearth and I can run up and down flights of stairs without showing the slightest sign of tiredness. Tests have proved that my vitality index figures are particularly high. Fruit eaters tested experimentally an increase in stamina of up to 55 percent, according to an article by Prof. B.J. Meyer under the heading "Terug na die Paradys" in Kernaktief of January 1973. Today I am capable of doing strenuous exercise or work, even if I do not eat at all for a few days. This was hardly the case before I became a fruit eater.

Whether I eat much or little, my mass has remained more or less constant for the past few years. It would seem as though the fruit eater loses mass if he is overweight and gains it is he is underweight. The fruit ensures that my normal mass is maintained without my having to worry or count the calories in my diet. My appetite regulates my food intake.

Is this an expensive diet?No, it is a relatively inexpensive diet compared with other well balanced

diets. Where could I find a better, cheaper, pleasanter and more nourishing meal than, for example, a fruit meal of two bananas, one avocado pear and a nice big apple — still obtainable in our expensive times, for so much less than any other meal? Through sound household budgeting by supporting markets and producers which offer the best quality at the cheapest prices — the costs of fruit purchases can be cut even further. A fruit meal is an enjoyable meal for little money and if one adds to this what one saves on electricity, spices, condiments and other items which are necessary for making other foods tasty, then fruit meals are so much cheaper. One even saves on labour, considering that one has far less work in a household where one seldom cooks or bakes.

Do you drink water, and how much?I hardly ever drink water. It is not necessary on a diet which is a liquid and

salt-free as is the fruit diet. I never feel thirsty, not even after the strenuous exercises to which I have had to submit for scientific observation. I avoid cool drinks in particular, and drink only natural fruit juices. Drinking is far less important to me than eating. In circles where tea is provided, I often drink water, preferably from a cup. I do not enjoy it, but at least I also have a cup in my hand! It was only fairly recently that I included rooibos tea in my diet, for social reasons.

It is said that milk is an ideal food. Do you drink milk?In my view cow's milk is an ideal food, but for the cow's calf, just as

mother's milk is an ideal food for babies. No animal goes on drinking milk beyond its infancy, and human beings do not go on drinking mother's milk until they are adult, so why should cow's milk be ideal?

Where do I get my proteins?This question worried me too until the diet was tested scientifically. In the

years when doubts beset me, I thought of the food of wild animals. If buck could be so fit on their diet of grass and giraffe so graceful on leaves only, then surely I could stay fit on only fruit. And that proved to be so. After twelve years on a diet of only fruit and nuts I was subjected to the most stringent scientific tests and there was no sign of a protein deficiency. In the South African Medical Journal of 20 February and 6 March 1971 scientific results

were published in two articles entitled "Some physiological effects of a mainly fruit diet in man" and "Some biochemical effects of a mainly fruit diet in man", which throw more light on the diet. Up to today, after twenty years on the fruit diet, no scientific proof has been found for deficiency diseases, and I feel fitter than ever before and enjoy sustained good health and zest for life. I therefore assume that the diet contains all the necessary components, including enough proteins, to keep me in good health.

What proof do you have that the fruit diet is better for you than any other good diet?

The responsibility for proving which diets are good and which are poor rests with science and not with individuals. Everything in this book is subjective. I took a gamble and, fortunately, I won. Scientific tests showed that I am no worse off on the fruit diet than are other people on any other diet, however balanced and good it is.

Since I have been on the fruit diet I am not interested in merely enjoying my food; I eat to live. Fortunately fruit is enjoyable. My ailments of the past disappeared, thanks to the diet. I never get headaches, stomach complaints or skin problems as I did in the past. Before I became a fruit eater, I thought that ailments were simply part of life and that was the way things were.

I have read that it is not possible to live on fruit only.Things which are considered heterodox today will be considered orthodox

in the future. That is the way of life. This will also be the case with the diet.Until recently dieticians still believed that it was impossible to live on a diet

of fruit only. Recent research has shown, however, that the possibility can no longer be ruled out.

Twenty years ago I was "old" and decrepit, tired of life and exhausted. At the age of thirty I was an old and sickly person.

In those days I once struggled to a swimming pool and with great effort looked for a spot of sunlight in which to lie down and rest. Because I could only lift my feet with the greatest difficulty, I stumbled over a hosepipe in my way and the gardener rushed to my aid saying, "Let me give you a hand, Granny". He said this in all seriousness!

That was twenty years ago. I am certain that today no one would call me "granny" or have to help me over a garden hose, even though I am twenty years older than I was then!

Unfortunately our most earnest strivings for eternal youth are thwarted by factors beyond our control, factors such as air and water pollution, and the pollution of the soil and the food on which life depends. We should all make our small contribution towards conserving these life-giving commodities by preventing pollution, even if it merely means walking instead of driving, or trying to avoid household sprays and chemical substances which pollute the environment.

Fruit is not grown under favourable conditions. Today fruit is just as diseased as are the people who have to eat it, but in spite of artificial fertilisers and poisonous sprays, the fruit diet is still amazingly beneficial. How much better could it not have been under ideal circumstances?

If there had not been pioneers with big dreams and great daring, I would not have known today that it was possible to live on the food of Paradise, for nowhere in my school or university career did I hear or learn of the fruit diet. What is more, I thought the words in Genesis 1:29 were a mere fairy tale.

Can anyone following this diet have a drink and an occasional cigarette?

Everyone, including the fruit eater, can do as he pleases, within limits. Smoking and drinking are not prohibited, but moderation and compromise are the questions at issue here. It makes no difference whether one indulges in something detrimental to one's health to excess or to a limited extent for such things remain detrimental.

As soon as any habit is called moderate, it can automatically be classified as detrimental, as moderation is only applied to something which has adverse effects. What it actually amounts to is "a little bit of sinning with a clear conscience".

As a compromise with evil is such a subtle case for the conscience, it is one of those problems which can only be solved in the inner chambers. The conflict between good and evil is a personal matter between God and man.

Unfortunately it is not always possible to limit habit-forming practices to one or two drinks or cigarettes. The world is full of examples of people who have played with this fire and today cannot give up the habit.

It is not necessary to consult books on the detrimental effects of smoking and drinking. Every smoker and drinker knows what they are and each person who smokes or drinks reflects these effects to a greater or lesser degree.

Do you never take medicine?I have not taken any medicine since 1958.However, I do not think of the diet in terms of a cure by a medicine; it is a

way of life, a pattern of behaviour which holds great benefits. Over the past twenty years I have simply not needed any medicine.

What does anyone wanting to live on fruit do if his income is limited?As I have already said, fruit is the most economical food on which to live,

and experience has taught me that the Creator provides "daily bread" to all who call on Him for it.

Even in the years when I did not know where my next meal would come from, I always, without exception, found fruit — enough to satisfy all my needs.

Sometimes it came from the most unexpected quarters. If you always turn your steps towards the light, there should be no fear of lacking the means

necessary for the journey. Just eat fruit. The Father will not fail you, of that I can assure you.

What is more, one spends so much money on unnecessary items nowadays. It was only when I became really poor in earthly goods, that I became aware of how little one needed to be happy and healthy. The things which bring real joy to life, are free.

What about menstruation and change of life?One's menstrual flow decreases on the diet. Menopause does not trouble

me; apart from an occasional hot flush, I am hardly aware of it.

Do you play sport?When I was younger, I was a great sports enthusiast. Today I am satisfied

with walks and work which requires bending.It is interesting, however, that I can today without any effort do strenuous

exercise without showing signs of exhaustion. I surprised myself once when I swam hundreds of metres of backstroke in a swimming gala at a high speed — after not having swum for years — without even being short of breath at the end of the race. I have so often considered wild animals, which have very little exercise but can nevertheless be so fleet-footed when they have to flee before an enemy.

I never feel exhausted nowadays, however hard I work. In the past I often became thoroughly exhausted. Fitness tests have shown that I am particularly full of vitality, more so than the average among even younger people. In spite of the fact that I am older now, my body is fitter and healthier than it was when I was much younger.

I have lived on two different diets and I have no doubt whatsoever as to which one has given me the best results and the best health.

Do you never feel like sinking your teeth into a tasty roast?Cornelius was a good teacher. He knew that a "newborn" fruit eater still

craves the food to which his body has been accustomed since childhood. So when we were married he kept me away from the temptation of being able to see, smell or taste other food. For instance, we spent a year camping out in the veld and I was never nearer to Paradise on earth than in that year of isolation from civilisation.

It was easy to eat fruit then. It was the only food I saw, and I simply forgot that other foods existed. During that year I discovered the joy and simplicity of this way of life. I had time to take stock of my whole life and to plan a definite course for the future. My body was satisfied with fresh and sweet fruit. I was again happy and healthy. I could once again lift my feet from the ground when I walked and breathe correctly and deeply. I could rediscover the firmament and feel the pleasure of the sun, wind and rain on my naked skin. The tranquility was tangible after the bustle of the city, and the beauty of nature

was refreshing after the tensions and frustrations of my former rushed existence.

After Cornelius's sudden death, which came at a time when he was still full of zest and vitality and a shining example of fitness, I had to return to a normal life. It took me many years to adapt to "civilisation" again.

But I steadfastly refused to change my diet. How many problems I brought on myself through my obstinate refusal to eat normally, you might well imagine. You can imagine the consequences in a society where the fruit diet had not yet been accepted socially or scientifically.

The reactions evoked by my habits were by no means encouraging, for they ranged from indignation to shock, disapproval, ridicule and at best acceptance for the sake of peace. I still think fondly of all who at that stage so patiently accepted my "otherness", for sincere interest was still rare then. I did not know at the time how to make sensible adjustments. I wanted at all costs to safeguard my newly found health and happiness, as the price paid for them had not been small.

It was in the years after Cornelius's death when I had to stand on my own feet, that I encountered temptations. I recall how I once (after having eaten only fruit for almost three years) could not stop eating potatoes, after I had again had a taste of them. My willpower had disappeared like mist before the sun and I sat eating potatoes like an alcoholic enslaved by drink. After two days of eating potatoes, my tongue turned bright blue and stung so much that I could eat nothing, not even potatoes. A three-day fast cured me of my uncontrollable craving, so that I could resume my fruit eating without inter-ruption.

I recall that on another occasion — that was after I had lived on fruit only for about six years — I was again tempted to taste other food, and I again found it hard to stop eating the "forbidden fruit". I tackled one kind of food after another and did not eat like a normal person but rather like a starving one, for my body was starved for the things it had been used to in the past. I simply could not stop eating once I had started, and lost all interest in fruit. Of course, I started feeling very sick, for I was no longer used to all the fatty, heavy and cooked foods.

This time I went to the mountains and lived in a hut, far away from temptation. When I was no longer faced with alternatives, everything settled down and I was again beyond the reach of temptation. At the top of the mountain, with my basket of fruit, I came to my senses and was once again ready to continue my pilgrimage.

Yes, there were many derailments. Only after twelve years could I, to my surprise, eat other foods without getting cravings for them. It happened like this: after my former experiences with compromise, I carried on with my fruit diet more resolutely than ever, without making any compromises. I was afraid of my uncontrollable reactions. But, no man is an island. The constant tension between me and my environment wherever I went, had detrimental consequences. Initially I tried to justify myself to people, but after a few

months I was thoroughly tired of my own story, with the result that I gradually withdrew from social activities and evaded social responsibilities. I became more and more of a recluse, and always tried to eat on my own.

Those were lonely years, and it was never more clear to me how big a role eating and drinking play in social intercourse. I cannot forget the shock I felt about remarks such as "Oh, you probably don't mind that we no longer invite you to dinner, but you are no longer one of us". These innocent words made me realise with a shock that I was an outcast and could not through my company alone make any claim to social intercourse with others.

I also had to be prepared to conform as far as behaviour was concerned. Such conflicts gave me nightmares in the past. And it was in those years that I started developing psychosomatic symptoms over which I had no control. I did not even realise what the troublesome pains and sensations as well as the loss of appetite and nausea meant. I had another medical examination and all the tests proved unanimously that I was in excellent health. The secret symptoms confused and frustrated me, until the possibility of such psychosomatic symptoms was brought to my attention. After twelve years on the fruit diet I decided by way of experiment to try eating with the household. The relief of being able to feel at one again with my fellow man was tremendous and even more so was the surprise at realising that I could eat as I WISHED and stop when I WISHED. However, I did not want to carry on mixing my foods for too long (as I again started feeling the discomfort of constipation, a sore throat and so on). My body had finally become perfectly "happy" with the fruit diet and I no longer craved other foods. My days of craving for the old diet were apparently over. When I could therefore eat just what I wished, I no longer felt like eating ordinary foods. Nor did I enjoy them any more.

I realised that sooner or later I would have to find a compromise, if I wanted to be admitted to social life again, but I could not bring myself to start eating other foods again. I wondered how I could ever have thought that foods such as meat, eggs, cake and tea were enjoyable, for after all these years I was so disappointed in them.

When I remarried in 1973, however, my days of social isolation came to an end, and my experiment with the fruit diet had been concluded. It was with some sadness that I closed the doors of the laboratory with its strict discipline and said farewell to my years of being a guinea-pig.

I had, however, had a foretaste of the promised land, and what I had seen was so beautiful and what I had experienced so enjoyable that this became my guiding ideal. Before my first husband's death his parting words to me were "See how far you can go and how high you can aim". These wise words inspire me to this day, and in spite of setbacks I still strive towards the ideal of the absolute fruit diet, within the limits imposed by my environment and the times in which I live.

Does not one experience negative reactions when changing for a diet according to which one ate everything to a diet of fruit only?

Yes, there were negative reactions for me. Some were so unfavourable that on my own initiative and without help I would not have been able to deal with them.

Later on I met people who changed their diet with a minimum of inconvenience. However, a great deal depends on whether you are old or young, ill or relatively healthy, weak or strong, what your previous diet consisted of, whether you drank and smoked heavily or what your attitude is towards the diet. It also makes a big difference whether you, as I did, change overnight from one diet to another or whether you gradually adapt your diet to a new diet over a period of months or even years.

There ought to be scientific explanations for all these "reactions", but they were beyond my reach, and I contented myself with the apparently "naive" explanations given by Cornelius and other pioneers of the fruit diet.

Please remember, what I am going to say here is not being held up as the truth. It is simply what Cornelius believed in after a lifetime of experience of the fruit diet and what I also believe, but only science can distinguish fact from fancy. Cornelius firmly believed that there is only one factor responsible for all man's suffering and aging. He called this "misplaced material". Other forerunners talked of "poisons", "impurities", "mucus"; and scientists would probably use the term incorrect eating. "Pollution", or "contamination" would also be appropriate terms. To the fruit eater the name is unimportant; it is the concept that counts.

A large part of this misplaced food, so the idea goes, ought not to be eaten by man, because it causes disease and degeneration. It accumulates in the body, pollutes the life-blood and obstructs the functioning of the organs (the body's machinery) so that they cannot perform their normal functions efficiently.

The body that is wronged in this way shows its protest by means of "reactions" (disease symptoms), which are unpleasant and cause suffering and pain. This suffering teaches people that they are straying from the right road, for it is not the Creator's will that His creatures should be ugly, ill and "old". Suffering and pain are thus the big stimulus for correcting what is wrong in our habits, so that our suffering might end.

Reactions have another purpose, namely to help the polluted body to get rid of these intruders and unwelcome guests. Take the common cold. After each cold, once I was rid of mucus and other impurities, I felt better, and as time went on my colds became less unpleasant, were briefer and gradually disappeared. This also applied to my other ailments.

If I had tried to check the cold with some or other kind of medicine, the impurities would still have been in my body, in addition to the means with which I wanted to cure the cold. Now both have to be expelled. So I learnt not to treat reactions, whether they were stomach complaints, headaches or nausea, but to let them go their own way.

During a "reaction" I merely fasted and drank water — preferably distilled or bore hole water, two full glasses per hour. In this way I learnt to help reactions along and not to suppress them, while I continued with my day-to-day activi-ties.

With the help of nature my ailing body had to clean house by means of my kidneys, digestive system, my skin, lungs and even my mouth. I learnt to rinse my mouth when I had a bad taste in it, to cough up phlegm from my lungs and not to swallow it, and to see enough sunlight. When constipation was still a problem, I kept my digestive canal open by means of a purgative or enema, until it could function properly.

I also sweated out impurities. A body which is healthy and strong, and which has good powers of resistance, succeeds in expelling any intruders. The senses of taste and smell also stand guard to forbid entry to any undesirable food which is unwelcome in the human body. If something is detrimental, the senses disapprove of it and if it is beneficial, the senses find it attractive, as is the case with wild animals (what a pity man has lost this capacity by succeeding in making the unattractive appear attractive). Take meat, for instance — none of man's senses would find meat attractive to eat while it is still in its natural form, as the wild beasts eat it. Meat has to be prepared and flavoured to deceive the sense — but is this to our advantage?

A body which, on account of impurities, cannot function normally, does not very easily rid itself of impurities, because the excretory organs have become lax in carrying out their functions, the lungs have been damaged through smoking, and the liver and other organs through alcohol, drugs (e.g. stimulants) and incorrect eating. The walls of the digestive tract are so thickly lined with matter that the colon is no longer able to efficiently excrete undigested food and the body's waste products. The intestines become a storage place for decaying waste products and a breeding ground for parasites which do not belong in the human body. The polluted blood in turn becomes a feeding ground for micro-organisms which cause disease.

The condition of decay which is reflected in disease symptoms, and the foul odours accompanying it, as well as the offensive gases and substances which leave the body in the form of perspiration, urine, faeces and breath, are not worthy of man.

The polluted body declines, becomes ugly, diseased and dies in pain. Like a defective radio, such a body cannot receive or transmit "music from the spheres", for bodily chemistry and perception go hand in hand (as every drug addict and alcoholic will know).

Fruit has the ability to help a sick body to become normal again in a natural way, but before this can happen the body first has to get rid of enormous quantities of impurities which are stored in the flesh and blood, the living tissue.

The renewal or rebirth of the body is no easy task and cannot be accomplished in a day; it is a life's task which goes on from one generation to the next.

Therefore I could not expect that a body as diseased as mine was in 1958 would simply overnight be young and fit again. Renewal is not such a simple matter. I had to see to it that my excretory organs functioned properly, for not only was it necessary for the waste products to be broken down by the diet, but they also had to be expelled from my body.

At first I had aids such as a light laxative and an enema, and I recall that I did many breathing exercises — not complicated exercises, because I was too weak, but exercises which made me breathe deeply. I sat on a bed, took a deep breath and turned left and right, or hung on a branch or something close at hand, took a deep breath and bent over backwards. Later on I could stand and bend forward and turn sideways while breathing deeply. The breathing exercise were of inestimable value to me for without them I simply would not have been able to survive. I breathed deeply all the time. When I went for a walk I concentrated on my breathing, and before I got up out of bed or from a chair I took a few deep breaths. I also did so before I climbed stairs and even paused to breathe deeply on each step. It took great effort to do so but it was essential for me to get my "machine" running again. I was massaged to improve my blood circulation, took steam baths when I started feeling better, sunbathed in the early morning sun, exposed my naked skin to sunlight and took walks, no matter how weak I felt. And I kept all these activities up for months on end.

In the early stages it was very important to me to see how many impurities I could expel. I personally witnessed "miraculous" healing due to fasting alone, a water fast. For example, I saw to my amazement how a leg with a septic wound from the ankle to the knee, which was swollen, gaping and open, and had not healed for nineteen years or reacted to any medication, was completely healed within six weeks, after a water fast of 28 days followed by a fruit diet.

This eccentric and almost childlike "observation", which formed the basis of my recovery and rejuvenation, later became a reality in my own life. Because of this I could understand why I could initially obtain such good results on so little fruit. Many months passed before my starvation days, my fasting and difficult days were past and my disease symptoms disappeared.

But there was satisfaction, from as early as the first week. My sinus pains and unsightly skin rash disappeared within the first month, while other symptoms were more persistent. Arthritis cases, in particular, take a long time to improve. I can now look back and see the path I walked and I know that somewhere along the line I lost my degenerated, weak and diseased body and found a new one, which I would not exchange today for all the money in the world. Not even in my youth did I know the kind of health and vitality I now have.

I know that when I started the diet in 1958, my colleagues took bets on how long I would be able to keep it up. I heard afterwards that their highest estimate was a week. However, the week became a month and after six months I was still at work and could pride myself on the fact that I had not

been absent from work for a single day. I climbed the ladder to health slowly but surely. I did not dream of spending energy on something like social enjoyment; it was only work and rest, and whenever I could I rested and went to bed early at night.

After a year I could look back. I had made the breakthrough, my mass had increased to 36 kg and I could again pick up my feet properly when I walked, although I was still totally unable to lift myself off the ground from a sitting position. At that stage running was still out of the question. My breathing had become deep and relaxed, my sleep had returned to normal and my appetite was good — I was always hungry!

I can now look back gratefully on the past twenty years with no regrets about the hardships for they were necessary and are now part of the distant past. My new body is to me a wonder I shall never be able to describe.

Like Cornelius and many other pioneers of the diet, I believe today that the people of the future will be fruit eaters and that disease and suffering will in this way disappear. Genesis 1:29 has become a norm in my life.

I do not regret the mistakes I made in my life, for they were costly lessons which helped me to learn what would benefit me and what would be to my disadvantage. Today I know better, and I do not make the same mistakes. My life has become precious to me and I shall never hold it cheap as I did in the past. I keep my body healthy and consider it an injustice to myself if I experience any discomfort. I see to it that I eat correctly, get enough rest and sleep, breathe properly and get enough exercise. I knew these things in the past too, but paid little attention to them then. Today I am another pioneer of this new lifestyle. I took the chance and succeeded, through grace and help from Above I am writing about my experiences because there are many people who give up hope because they lack the necessary insight and faith. They have no one to give them moral support and encourage them when problems arise. They have no one to encourage them to keep going when reactions arise to help them to help nature to support the body's purification processes and not obstruct them.

Many people prefer, perhaps wisely so, to take things slowly and gradually accustom their bodies to a diet of raw foods, rather than without help and guidance rush headlong into the diet of fruit only to find that they have bitten off more than they can chew — socially, physically and mentally.

It is difficult to lay down hard and fast rules because every person is an individual and circumstances differ from one person to the next. That is why I would rather try to paint a picture, for if one has a goal in sight one finds one's own ways of reaching it. The technique is a personal matter, but the goal should be clear, otherwise one tends to take one step forward and two steps back and undermine what one has built up.

Time is not important, but the steadiness of each step in a definite direction is of the utmost importance. If a bad habit has to be abandoned in one's own interests, it has to be done permanently and not for just a few days. Only in this way can one make progress.

It is, of course, possible to become a (fruit eater) overnight and to break down an established pattern so as to build a new body and way of life from the ruins. I did so, but there was a price to pay and it was the biggest challenge I have ever known, in spite of the help and guidance I received. So do not be discouraged if things do not come right immediately; the process of rebirth is joyful, but not easy.

I am overweight. Will I be able to lose weight on a fruit diet?It seems as though the fruit diet normalises the body, and makes fat people

thinner and thin ones fatter, irrespective of the amounts of fruit eaten. For seven months my mass showed little change. In fact, I became thinner than I had been, and only then did the situation change. My mass suddenly started increasing without me changing my diet in the least and the increase carried on over a period of two to three years (if I remember correctly) until it became constant and has remained so till today. My mass is now between 48 and 50 kg.

However, I know people who eat just as much fruit as I do, in addition to a normal diet. They eat two diets simultaneously. It is obvious that fruit will not help them to lose weight. The more fruit one eats, the less other food one should eat. As a fruit eater I simply had to learn to say no, which does not mean no one day and yes the next. To get results I had to change my eating habits, not just for a bare three weeks, only to return to the old ways, but permanently!

Does one pass more urine on the fruit diet than normally?Yes, this was my experience and that of others who tried the diet. Not only

is there more urine, but it becomes alkaline and almost odourless and colourless. The stools also become very light in colour, sometimes greenish when one eats many avocado pears, and so light in texture that they float on the water. They also become odourless. One of the joys of the diet for me was that the body's waste products lose their offensive odour so that deodorants are no longer necessary. It is a joy to live in such a "clean" body.

Is the diet not boring?No, it is not boring, for what is better than eating to become younger and

fitter each day instead of older and more and more unfit? Health and beauty go together, as do illness and growing old.

Is it possible for one to eat too much or too little fruit?My personal opinion is that a healthy body which functions efficiently solves

this problem itself through the appetite.Today I soon know when I am overeating. My appetite tells me precisely

when and how much to eat. In the past this was not the case. I ate according

to the clock and did not even know what it was to feel hungry.I do not have to guard against overeating, as fruit is a light diet and does

not make one feel uncomfortable, even when one does overeat. But I do guard against eating too little or mixing fruit with other foods in such a way that it can easily spoil my appetite for fruit, with the result that I do not eat enough fruit. For example, if I were to eat too many sweets, it would spoil my appetite for fruit.

How do you manage to mix socially without ever having to compromise? I do not succeed in doing so?

As you would have gathered by this time from my previous answers, the social aspect was my greatest challenge too Even after twenty years on the diet I have to admit that I have not yet completely solved the social problem.

Cornelius's golden rule, "there is no strength in a compromise", guides me to this day, but the time factor sets limits to even this ideal. Twelve years ago the climate towards this diet was still unfavourable; today it is much more favourable

It is as if mankind is awakening and as if the diet has become a household word. Even the fruitarian is no longer eyed as if he were an alien from another planet or suffered from a contagious disease. Today a fruitarian enjoys scientific and social recognition. Twelve years ago this was not the case, and this makes a big difference to social contact.

Today it is no longer necessary, as it was in the past, for me to have to attend dinners where I cannot have a single dish on the menu, from the soup to the coffee — to the disappointment of the hostess, the waiters and guests. Now I can enjoy at least something on such a menu, as raw foods and salads are the order of the day and have become fashionable. Today I no longer go anywhere where I do not find some or other item I can eat. Many of my friends are already living mainly on raw foods and fruit. It is no longer strange to be a fruitarian.

If I had been more flexible in years gone by and had sometimes yielded a little, so that I could feel at one with the group I was eating and drinking with, I would have had a far easier time of it. No doubt I would not have become so isolated socially; but at that stage more important things were at stake for me than social intercourse and that is why I was inflexible.

In the days when my otherness was noticeable I experienced many amusing incidents, unfortunately not always pleasant at the time but nevertheless funny when one looks back on them. There was, for instance, a dinner we attended. The hotel undertook to cater for my fruit needs as unobtrusively as possible. We sat at the main table with the guests arranged in a long row so that one was dependent on the company of the two people on either side of one. The hors d'oeuvres consisted of a fruit cocktail, which I was able to enjoy. Then came the soup, and an empty plate for me. At this stage the company was still convivial. Then followed the other courses, with

speeches in between, and still my plate stood empty.My companions started eyeing me with increasing curiosity and asked the

waiter what had become of my food. Yes, he was bringing it, it was all arranged, but still no trace of the promised plate of fruit. It was now roundabout 10:30 pm. The atmosphere had started chilling, and as usual I was the wet blanket because I was not participating in the meal. After the rich meal the guests no longer felt like dessert, but eventually dessert was served and along with it came an enormous bowl of fruit, beautifully arranged and hopelessly too much for me. It was placed in front of me with a flourish and everyone gaped at me. In no time at all the guests had eaten their dessert, the music had started playing and people left the dinner table for coffee or a dance. And I had not even started peeling the first fruit yet!

On another occasion too a large and beautiful arrangement of fruit landed in front of me. One of the guests remarked: "Just look, lovely fruit!" He took one, and passed the bowl around, with everyone highly surprised at the treat. Nowadays people enjoy surprises and changes, and many people welcome the opportunity to be able to break away socially from big and rich meals.

In the more favourable climate of today there are few social obstacles which cannot be eliminated successfully.

I am an elderly person. Can I start the diet or am I too old?I think anyone can start this diet, no matter what his age. For me old age

simply does not exist; only a body which is either neglected or kept in good condition.

Surely one is never too old to start a programme of rejuvenation. It is simply that the older person has more damage to repair, but I have come across at least a few elderly people who have had very encouraging results after experimenting with the diet.

There was the case of Oom Jan, who had already passed the eighties milestone. He was a heart sufferer and had to sit propped up in a chair because he could not risk lying down. His hands hung limply at his sides, his eyes stared joylessly as if nothing mattered any more. His days were numbered. He had just been discharged from hospital and all that remained was for him to be cared for well until the end.

To cut a long story short, Oom Jan started the fruit diet. Under Cornelius's care he fasted and learnt to eat fruit. After only six weeks he was quite fit and before he returned to his home at a coastal resort in the Cape he expressed the desire to visit the Voortrekker Monument. I climbed the steps with him on the appointed day and was gratified that his wish had been realised.

I sent my father a telegram asking him to meet Oom Jan's train. My father, who had seen the ailing person depart the previous month, was still a doubting Thomas as far as the fruit diet was concerned and took all the necessary precautions. Yes, everything was in order for Oom Jan's homecoming. The stretcher was there as well as the people to help him off the train and carry

him to the car. Imagine my father's surprise when the train stopped and Oom Jan casually, suitcase in hand, hopped down and walked over to him!

Were you not too weak to fast?It has never been necessary for me to go to bed during a fast. Even when I

was extremely weak I simply started living as if I was a normal, healthy person. I steered my thoughts away from the idea of illness and made the most of the limited health I had. I found it very encouraging to believe that each day was better than the previous one and that I had regained a little more health because I was eating fruit. Even the unpleasant reactions which had to accompany my condition were to me signs of progress which filled my heart with joy That was because my perspective had changed.

I still recall very well how I regularly fainted each morning, sometimes twice or three times between my bed and the bath. I was bruised all over from falling against the furniture, but each time I came round I nevertheless felt pleased, pleased because I regarded even the fainting spells as progress, so strong was my faith in the powers of fruit. Such reactions did not, as they had done previously, make me feel anxious and unhappy. As soon as I regained consciousness I set to work and started breathing deeply so as to get going again. I found it difficult to do a day's work in those days, each moment was hard work, but joyful work for what is more wonderful than rising from the "dead", taking up your bed and starting to walk?

I believed that I could not regain my health until my body had been purged through fasting and the fruit diet (which is another form of abstaining from all other food) of all the harmful substances which hampered my bodily processes. I kept on losing mass until I weighed a scant 31.3 kg, and yet I started feeling better. The unpleasant odours from all the body's excretions such as urine, faeces and perspiration, simply disappeared. One fine day, without my changing my diet, the miracle occurred: the scale registered a weight gain. My joy knew no bounds as I knew my "house cleaning" days were almost over.

What is the best method of changing from an ordinary diet to a fruit diet?

There is no set method for changing from an all-embracing diet to a fruit diet. Science, with its complicated machinery for pointing the way and opening up new roads, is the right source for designing such methods, but guidance from scientific quarters is yet to come. In the meanwhile anyone interested in the diet has to rely on the available reading matter, mostly written by those who have tested the diet and are writing from their experience of it.

In any event, anyone tackling the diet today is still a guinea-pig. For this reason it would be a good idea for all who try it to keep a record of their experiences. The knowledge thus accumulated would be valuable, for human guinea-pigs are necessary for increasing knowledge on this diet. For example,

one could from time to time make short notes on the quantity of fruit eaten, which kinds are most enjoyable, what reactions are encountered, what one's state of mind was at the start of the diet, and how one's fellows reacted to the new eating habit. There are as many methods of making the change as there are people in the world. Everyone goes ahead on his own initiative and learns by experience and by making the odd mistake. Of course many mistakes are made, but even the mistakes provide valuable information.

Of all man's habits, eating is probably the most difficult to change. Not only did I eat without any discipline before, but I learnt to love many harmful foods and habits. What is more, eating habits are very deeply rooted, not only physiologically, but also mentally and socially. I soon had to learn that set eating habits could not be broken simply by exercising a little willpower. The established habits are not so easily dethroned. Perspective, faith and purposefulness were far more important for me to make a success of the new diet than were menus, recipes, rules and regulations.

Do you find fruit difficult to obtain?If one considers that South Africa is known for its excellent fruit, it is

actually ironical that the fruitarian who takes his diet seriously, the person who must at all costs obtain fruit and is prepared to pay for it, still has to struggle to find good, reasonable healthy and attractive fruit. It is, however, encouraging that the position has improved. One hopes that all fruit lovers in South Africa will one day have an ample share of the rich harvests of our fine land.

The housewife is awakening and is more and more interested in the health and welfare of her family. Housewives are already teaming up and buying good fruit at good prices.

I am always looking for fruit which brings me joy. Sometimes I am lucky and sometimes I have to be content with fruit of a poorer quality. But we have a home with a garden, and friends often bring us lovely fruit in season from their gardens.

However, I still have to depend on fruit I have to buy and shop around a great deal to find exactly what I want.

CHAPTER 3The Transitional diet The birth of a new eating habit

Questions and answers, 1973-1979

In 1973 you were remarried. How did your husband accept the diet?For sixty-six years my husband enjoyed delicious meals — meat, fish, rice

and gravy, chocolate cake, ice cream, curry and rice and all the traditional foods. Although he had enough ailments to mar his zest for life, he had a powder or a pill for each and he in no way intended to follow his eccentric wife's eating habits when we were married in 1973. On the other hand I, after having had no kitchen duty for sixteen years, decided in the very first week that I would far sooner try to transform him into a fruitarian than myself into a cook.

And that is where the idea of a transitional diet began, and without my husband's knowing that he was a guinea-pig, I put my four-phase plan into effect.

The plan would be divided into four distinct phases: Phase one: The simplification of the existing diet. Phase two: Farewell to all products from the animal kingdom. Phase three: Farewell to the stove.

Phase four: An absolute diet of fresh fruit and nuts, supplemented with what may be found necessary through more research in the future.

There was no room for tyranny and it took all of four years before fruit started taking its place of honour on the menu, as the following incident proves.

One fine day, just before I decided that my stove had become a white elephant, I wanted to make sure of my case. I bought the necessary ingredients for a meal right out of the good old days. I took a whole morning of baking and brewing, but by one o'clock the surprise was on the table. Bobotie and yellow rice with raisins, chocolate ice cream and coffee. I was dying to see what my husband's reaction would be to this sudden return to the old ways. Would he still be pleasantly surprised? By this time a meal of this kind had become a thing of the past in our home.

As usual he sat down at the table, looked at the food, then looked at me and looked at the food again, and still there was no hint on his face to betray his feelings. Then he said in a fairly gruff manner: "Do I have to eat this food again? For goodness sake, rather go and fetch my fruit." At that moment I knew that my husband, who had formerly eaten all kinds of food, who had followed a traditional eating pattern for sixty-six years, had in a mere four years come to love the fruit diet as much as I did. His reaction was honest and completely spontaneous. The following day the stove was discarded, along with many of the saucepans, and a second refrigerator took the place of the stove, which was replaced by a single gas cooker — just in case. The kitchen took on a bare and peaceful look and I could breathe again!

My husband's change from one diet to another had therefore been gradual, and the joy of it all was that he never had to go hungry or experience social frustration. He compromises socially to adapt to the demands of his surroundings. At home he is perfectly happy in the milieu of a fruitarian.

How did you as a housewife help your husband to change his diet?My biggest job was to introduce fruit to him as a food. It had to be placed

somewhere where he would be able to see it and feel like eating it, not as a treat at the end of a large meal, but as part of his food. I realised that if he could start EATING fruit and not merely nibbling at it, he would soon appreciate the benefits of this food.

And this was precisely what happened, for when he started realising that his excess mass, his headaches and even ugly moles on his back slowly but surely started disappearing and that he could again climb stairs without stopping half way to pant for breath, he became more and more enthusiastic about the fruit diet. He no longer needed much encouragement. My hardest task was at the start, for how is one to make the fruit noticeable on an overfull menu, and who on earth feels like fruit after a bowl of porridge, bacon and eggs, a glass of milk and a slice of bread?

So my biggest task was to simplify his menu so diplomatically that he did not realise he had started a transitional diet.

I set to work more or less as follows:Half an hour before breakfast I presented him with the finest fruit I could

find. "Just taste these delicious figs." And who would not enjoy breaking one's fast with fresh fruit? I then saw to it that the cup of coffee was overlooked. Then I called him for breakfast. Of course, after a plate of figs, grapes or peaches, he hardly felt like eating much.

On another morning I would say, "Oh, please forgive me, but I forgot to put the milk in the fridge and it has turned sour; would you mind eating fruit pulp this morning?" Fruit pulp is a delicious dish made from various kinds of fresh fruit mixed in a blender, with a half a cup of nuts included.

One combines, for example, half a small musk melon, a banana, a sweet apple, peach or pear and some fruit juice for mixing it in the blender to a nourishing pulp.

At first I served fruit pulp by way of exception, but it was served more and more frequently until it became an institution.

For the main meal I always made a variety of attractive salads, enough for the two of us. My husband was free to eat them or leave them. But when he saw me enjoying the salads, he joined in and in this way acquired a taste for raw food, for there were never so many other dishes on the menu that they completely excluded fruit.

Whereas his breakfast had formerly consisted of a series of foods eaten in succession, breakfast in the first phase always consisted of a bowl of fresh fruit or fruit pulp, a bowl of porridge, a bowl of dried stewed fruit, an egg dish,

or a slice of toasted wholewheat bread, but no meat, tea and coffee, except occasionally a glass of milk or yoghurt at the beginning.

After the first year fruit had already replaced a third of the daily menu.I just made sure that the diet remained balanced, for at this stage it was far

from being a fruit diet and was merely a fruit-rich omnivorous diet. Every day there had to be something on the table from each of the following categories:

(a) Proteins: Fish, meat or cheese, milk, nuts, a soya or other legume dish.(b) Carbohydrates: Especially wholegrain products such as wholewheat

bread, unsifted maize meal, undished rice and so on.(c) Mineral salts: Especially green vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and

the leaves of various kinds of herbs, especially the Comfrey plant's leaves also rich in Vit. B12.

(d) Vitamins: Especially fresh fruit, but raw vegetables as well.(e) Fats: Cheese, butter, milk, nuts and avocados.

I served three meals a day with a fruit drink or rooibos tea in between and occasionally a snack. Fresh fruit was, however, the main component of each meal and I took pains to find attractive and fresh fruit. Stews, pies, and all manner of elaborate concoctions were systematically replaced by simpler dishes.

My major task as a housewife was to see to it that there was always good and tasty fruit and that it was eaten, but never by forcing it — rather by advertising fruit as a wholesome and enjoyable food.

Can one make the change gradually to a fruit diet?Many people, wisely so, do not see their way clear to changing their

established habits overnight. There are people who prefer a sudden change from one diet to another, and make a success of it. But they are in the minority and can be grouped into three classes:

a) Those who have suffered so much as a result of illness that they are prepared to try anything which promises to bring relief. They want to see results quickly and do not mind the challenge involved. Their joy of life is, in any event very limited.

b) Those who have been vegetarians for years and now wish to try a new aspect of their diet.

c) Those who firmly believe in Gen. 1:29, a fruitarian diet is the ideal food for man. Eating fruit is part of their outlook on life and it is for that very reason that these people are so strongly motivated, and they are equipped with so much self-discipline and enthusiasm that rapid changes do not present them with an insurmountable challenge.

For the majority of those interested, the transitional diet is the ideal way.

Experience of the diet has taught me that success depends on mainly three important factors. The first is purposefulness; the second, steady progress (not speed) towards your goal; and the third is believing that you will reach your goal, come what may (endurance).

Armed with these three weapons it makes no difference whether one moves quickly or slowly and how one sets about realising one's ideal. We all have our joys, as well as our problems and obstacles to overcome.

It is never advisable to try to change against one's will. If the change is not undertaken as something meaningful and joyful, it does more harm than good, for what is the use of trying to gain health by means of a new diet if the spirit still rebels and one feels resentment towards the new intruder which is merely disrupting the old way of life. A state of mind such as this is enough in itself to make one ill, let alone healthy!

Any person who tackles a new lifestyle should therefore be spiritually prepared to make the change a happy experience. If not, it is better to wait, or to move very slowly until the time is ripe for such a change, for just as an alcoholic who is not yet wholeheartedly ready to give up alcohol in the interests of recovery, still continues drinking secretly, the person who does not yet accept the fruit diet as a meaningful change but tries it merely for superficial motives, will not have the necessary motivation to make a success of the new diet. Just like the alcoholic he will have his fill of all he desires. A fruit diet which lacks motivation and discipline can only end in deficiency diseases, for it is far better to follow a fruit-rich, well-balanced all-embracing diet than an inadequate fruit diet with too many injudicious compromises which destroy one's appetite for fruit.

In the transitional diet everyone is able to move step by step. As soon as one stage has been mastered, has been integrated meaningfully and become a part of one's eating pattern, the next step is tackled. I regarded the first phase of the transitional diet not as a fruit diet but as a well-balanced, fruit-rich, omnivorous or normal diet.

The second phase started becoming vegetarian by withdrawing products from the animal kingdom such as meat, eggs, fish, cheese and milk. Whereas meat had been served daily at first, I now started replacing meat with fish and some or other kind of vegetarian food. Eggs were used less often and so were cheese and milk. By the end of that year the menu already consisted of at least 50 per cent fresh fruit and nuts, and the rest of raw vegetables, whole grain produce and slight compromises from the menu. Not only was meat served less and less often in this year, but the portions became smaller, until they finally disappeared and were retained only for social reasons. Fish was also served only occasionally, so that the main meal was also transformed. Fresh fruit increasingly came into its own and was supplemented by particularly (green leafy vegetables and whole grain products,) dried and sometimes canned (without preservatives) fruit, which were used alternately for breakfast, lunch and supper. At this stage raw salads, avocados and fruit drinks still occupied an important place on the menu.

The third phase differs considerably from the previous two stages for not only did fresh fruit dominate the menu now, but the three meals started looking more and more alike. Breakfast and supper were mainly fresh fruit meals, without any frills. Even dinner gradually became a fruit meal supplemented with whole grain food, the stove became redundant, cooked food became an exception, meat dishes a thing of the past and salads a variation on the fruit programme. Rooibos tea and fruit drinks were sometimes taken for social reasons. Occasionally something reminiscent of the past cropped up, only to disappear for weeks on end. sometimes for good.

The kitchen takes on a different look, meals are not served promptly at set times and one starts eating when one is hungry, often having meals spaced hours apart. The dining room starts losing its function and meals are served at convenient places. Suddenly there is time for everything and one's general health and energy reflect the wholesomeness of this diet.

The fourth phase is the ideal of the food of paradise exclusively, but until this phase is reached it remains an ideal to strive towards and even then the striving will not end, as the fruit itself can improve, as well as the air, the water and one's state of mind. There is no end to what one can achieve physiologically, and the way to the ideal future diet is yet to be paved by science and those who believe in Gen. 1:29.

The transitional diet of this stage therefore has no fixed rules or patterns. It can take countless forms. The four-phase programme which I planned and experimented with for my husband merely provided guidelines and not laws. There were, of course, limits and milestones, as well as discipline, but each person sets his own limits and horizons and knows what he is capable of.

These diet changes are a case of everyone for himself as no one can make them for another. The only help which I can give is company on the long and interesting road, moral support and tips from my own experience.

It is, however, important, along with the adjustments and changes in one's diet, to give attention to other habits which affect one's health and retard one's progress, habits such as exercise, sleep and rest. It is essential to learn to deal with factors causing tension, as tension is our biggest enemy and not even the success of the fruit diet can counter the erosion caused by tension to the body and soul.

I read one of your articles and for a week I ate only fresh fruit — after a short fast — but it was too much for me. I gave up and am right back where I started. Can you offer any advice?

A week is far too short a time for one to find one's feet with a new habit. Yes, all fruitarians know this type of challenge. One reads or hears of the diet, becomes excited and inspired with a new ideal. You set to work immediately, without any preparation. You start the day with a bowl of fruit, but grill a tasty piece of sausage for hubby. You get a whiff of it and just because it is now forbidden, your craving for this well known flavour overcomes you. You

depend on your willpower but find it is no longer as strong as it was this morning when you got up, before you saw and smelt the sausage. First you taste a piece and then eat some more, and feel like eating still more.

By 11 o'clock you sit back and relax with your cup of warm water and dream of the bulges that are going to disappear when suddenly the door bell rings and there is a good friend you have not seen for a long time. Before you know what you are saying, you say: "Come inside, you're just in time for tea." Oh goodness! What now? So there is one incident after another which suddenly brings you into conflict with your old habits and you discover that you cannot cope with all the unexpected reactions you are encountering. If you give in, you feel disappointed in yourself. If you stick to your guns, you not only get opposition from the "Old Adam" but often from your environment all well, which finds you just that little bit odd. You soon realise that the problems cannot always be laughed off and you feel beaten.

This is not because there is anything wrong with the diet or with you or your environment; it is caused by a lack of insight, knowledge, perspective and experience of what you are doing. You are acting blindly. However, one has to start gaining knowledge somewhere, and even such a stormy start which fails dismally, gives one valuable knowledge. At least you have learnt that it is a formidable challenge and that it cannot be tackled over-hastily as this limits one's chances of success. Without planning one all too soon lands in a fix, for where have you heard of an established habit which is effortlessly pushed aside by a new intruder?

I had to stop and think seriously before I could start. This is not only my experience; others have also found this to be the case. One cannot make a better start than fasting, for by abstaining from all food temporarily one gets a grip on oneself. For example, after drinking water for one to three days and consistently saying "no" to everything, it is easy to face temptation and say "Not for me". This gives one a secure footing and it is in this respect that some people prefer fasting at a health resort, which provides help, where there are others in the same boat and there is a more favourable climate in which to start. Others do it all on their own. even if this takes more courage.

What is fasting and how does one fast?Fasting means to stop eating food altogether and only to drink water. The

idea is that this gives the body a chance to clean house. And this is precisely what happens. The custom of fasting is as old as the hills and nature itself imposes a fast on every person and animal that feels unwell, so that it has a chance to repair the damage. We fast overnight, and the longer this fast is the greater the benefits it holds for one's health. Cutting out breakfast is also a form of fasting.

Many books have been written on fasting and there are health resorts to which one can go for the purpose of fasting.

The simplest form of fasting is to eat nothing at all and just to drink plenty of

water, as the body's water balance should not be upset and water is also the medium through which waste substances are flushed from the system.

There are other forms of fasting, however, which are less drastic. The fruit diet itself is a form of fasting.

A fast may be very brief or very long. It is not advisable, however, for anyone interested in the diet to undertake periods of fasting for longer than three days at the most without the necessary preparation and knowledge. By means of a short fast of twenty-four hours at the most one can only benefit. Fasting is a necessity for every fruit eater, not only as a starting point but to encourage and stimulate the purification process.

The transitional diet always begins with a short fast of twenty-four hours. In that way one says thus far and no further; now I am starting a new road. During the twenty-four hours one refuses all food. After that it is not very difficult to make a new start.

I started with a three-day water fast. Afterwards I went on a diet of fruit only, but each time a reaction occurred, whether it was nausea, a headache or a stomach ache, I again took refuge in fasting. Sometimes this lasted for twenty-four hours and sometimes for longer periods, until the particular symptom had disappeared and my appetite had returned.

Fasting is often accompanied by more drastic forms of expulsion than just perspiration, urine and the normal bowel movements; it is often accompanied by nausea, in which case I always drank two glasses of hot water to encourage the nausea. After getting rid of something the body rejects so vio-lently, one feels much better.

The same happens during a cold. There too I assumed that my body wanted to expel many harmful substances in the form of mucus and phlegm and always encouraged the cold by fasting. I never tried to suppress the body's secretions by means of medicines. Over the years the colds which had at first been my loyal companions occurred less and less frequently, while the symptoms no longer caused me such discomfort. Later on I only occasionally caught a light cold, with no discomfort whatsoever, not even a blocked nose, a headache or runny eyes. For the past number of years I have been completely free of colds.

The idea of fasting is always to rid one's body of harmful substances which have entered it through either one's food or the air. During the fruit diet, with the help of fasting, I never tried to suppress bodily secretions. When I perspired, I took a hot bath so that I could perspire even more. When I had a skin rash, I simply washed my skin, but never applied ointment or anything else; when I was nauseous I helped it along; and when I had a stomach complaint, I let it go its own way.

I know that in the light of all established thinking I took a gamble, but I had to take the plunge in order to succeed, and today I consider fasting one of man's best friends. I never fasted for more than three days at a stretch, as I was already underweight; but I saw one case where a woman fasted for twenty-eight days and was cured through fasting alone, even before she

started eating fruit. Since it was an open wound which had to be healed, one could watch nature's healing powers at work. Such cases gave me food for thought and a firm belief in the benefits of sensible fasting.

How should I fast?There are many methods of fasting and much has been written about

fasting, but I prefer the ordinary water fast, which is very simple.For three days I drank only water — two glasses an hour, preferably

distilled, bore hole or spring water; but tap water if these were unobtainable. I carried on with my work as usual in spite of the fact that I felt ill and weak. My faith in the good results this would hold for me was, however, strong enough to encourage me to keep going. However, it is not advisable to fast for longer periods without experience or more knowledge.

I experienced unpleasant reactions during my first fast as my body was in a state of neglect and my blood was badly polluted. I felt dizzy, became sick, felt weak and suffered from headaches. These things simply had to be endured, as house-cleaning is not exactly a pleasant task and for me there was only one aid, namely self-discipline. Today I can fast for long periods without experiencing any kind of discomfort as my blood is far purer now than it was in those days!

On the evening before the fast I took a lukewarm bath, scrubbed my skin well until it glowed and took a light laxative to make sure the digestive canals were open so that what was broken down by the fast could be discharged from the body. Then I drank two glasses of water, prayed for grace and help in the undertaking, read a few inspiring thoughts and went to bed.

For the next three days I drank water, water and more water, until I felt as if it was coming out of my ears, but even this could not suppress the song in my heart! "At last I am on the road back to the food of Eden." And in my imagination I saw myself running and jumping, something which at that moment was possible in my imagination only, as I could hardly lift my heavy feet off the ground.

Like a blinkered horse I said no to everything, no to the eats in the staff room where a colleague was celebrating a birthday, no to breakfast, lunch and supper, and to tea and drinks. "No thank you, I would prefer to take a walk."

While I fasted I started taking a look at my 10 per cent health. In the past I had been obsessed with my 90 per cent illness. But I still had something to build on, even if it was rather little. I started doing breathing exercises, went to bed earlier, thought positive thoughts, brushed my hair and rubbed my skin, and so the three days passed.

Be sure not to break the fast by storming to a refrigerator full of delicacies or to the bread bin; just take one tasty, ripe fruit. You will then discover the taste of this new staple food, but first have a good look at it. smell it. sink into a chair and eat it slowly. This is how fruit will become a bosom friend.

What does one do after the fast?In my opinion it is the right time to make the acquaintance of the new staple

food before starting the transitional diet, which is a compromise between the old and new diets. Should you wish to start with the first phase, a fast of twenty-four hours is adequate. This is followed by a three-day diet of fruit only. This procedure has been followed with success by many.

The first dayThis day starts with one fresh fruit. No tea, coffee, milk or beverages in

between; only a glass of water with a dash of lemon juice in it. The other two meals consist exclusively of fresh, ripe fruit, just one kind per meal. Vary the fruit for each meal: for example, a pear for breakfast, half a musk melon for lunch and a bunch of grapes in the evening. Eat the fruit slowly, and savour it.

The second and third daysThree meals of fresh fruit, two to three kinds of fruit per meal, with a glass

of fresh fruit juice between meals. After each meal one usually eats a heaped tablespoonful of nuts.

If you have already reached the second or third phase, you may try a three-day fast, followed by a diet of fresh fruit for one week or three weeks respectively. The procedure too has been tried successfully.

During the first week only one kind of fruit is eaten per meal or, for example, grapes all week long.

During the second week one can combine different kinds of fruit and eat nuts as well. Meals should be spaced at least five hours apart, with only a glass of water or a fruit drink between meals.

In the third week the fruit is still mixed, for example half a pawpaw and a naartjie and a banana for breakfast, or a bunch of grapes and a few peaches or pears, or two mangoes and plums. It makes no difference which fruits are combined or how many are eaten. For lunch one's meal consists of raw vegetables and fruit, such as combined with any fruit and with fresh green leaves such as lettuce leaves and, for example, parsley, celery, comfrey or other herbs. I even use young grape or apricot leaves, or any other green leaves. (This is the fruit eater's medicine.) With my meal I enjoy eating a whole avocado pear and then some more fresh fruit, as much as I need to satisfy my appetite. Pineapple is also delicious with salads. The third meal also consists of only fresh fruit, any kind in season.

I eat until my hunger is satisfied and add nuts to taste, about half a cup per day, or take them after or between meals with a glass of fruit juice. Fruit pulp also comes in handy.

This is more or less the procedure tried by me, my husband and anyone who came along and asked for advice. The results were good all round for those who kept to the programme and did not throw in the towel half way through fear of weight loss or any kind of reaction.

And what happens after the three days or three weeks?Beginners should take new diet changes slowly. Draw up a menu for

yourself and decide what to eat and which foods are taboo and have to be omitted. It is wise to keep strictly within the limits you set yourself. One tiny exception soon leads to the next, and before you know it you are right back where you were, back in the all-eating diet. Then all you can do is to start fasting again from the start.

If I decide to give up smoking or alcohol, or cut out vinegar, peppers, sweets or anything else, I delete those items from my shopping list, take them out of my cupboards and remove them from my house. Then they become a thing of the past. If they have to be kept at home for others, I shut my eyes to them. I do not buy a tub of ice cream and keep it in the fridge so that I have to see it each time I open the door, just to exercise my will power. But if it does happen to be there, I look the other way until I no longer notice it.

It is fun simplifying a menu and deciding what will or will not be to your advantage. If there are things which you know are unwholesome, superfluous or expensive, why keep on buying them? This is how the diet is planned, and re-planned at the following phase. The necessary adjustments are made to suit one's particular circumstances.

My husband fasted with me but developed diarrhoea and started feeling weak, so he became anxious and went back to his old diet. Did he do the right thing?

Such questions can only be answered by scientists once the diet has been tested on many human guinea-pigs.

I personally had to rely on the hypothesis that a fast and the fruit diet had the power to purify my body and that excretions and secretions would then be the order of the day. I simply welcomed, encouraged and never tried to stop each form of elimination, whether it took place through the digestive canal, the kidneys, the lungs, the skin or the mouth. As soon as my body had rid itself of what it had tried to expel, in whatever form, I started feeling better and more energetic.

Fruitarians call these occurrences "reactions", and in my case the reactions at the beginning were rather drastic, but I am an inquisitive person and wanted to experience everything for myself and see the diet through to its full consequences.

I have often wondered where I would have been if I had lost faith, lost courage or tried to counteract the reactions instead of letting them go their own way. I lost a great deal of mass, frequently had stomach complaints and

muscular cramps — and sometimes felt deathly weak — as well as stomach aches through flatulence and as a result of the sudden change of diet. This even occurred months later, but my hopes were not disappointed. Nature did her work of reconstruction slowly and often painfully, but thoroughly. My job was to carry on eating fruit, as much as I could manage, and to do so with a positive attitude.

In the course of days, weeks, months and years the "reactions" became less unpleasant and occurred less frequently. After each reaction I felt healthier and happier. Each reaction was a rung on the ladder towards health. Today I still consider all secretions as a blessing in disguise and no catas-trophe. As far as I am concerned, the body is simply getting rid of everything that is detrimental, superfluous or useless, and not the necessary building materials or fuel. But whether others will experience the same as I did. is for them to find out. The fruitarians of today are pioneers and guinea-pigs, and if one is not prepared to display the daring of a pioneer, it is better to remain with the old and well-trodden paths where there are remedies for all the effects of bad life planning, ignorance and blindness.

I have often considered starting a fruit diet, but do not know where to start and which fruits are important to the diet.

As soon as one starts eating fruit as a food and not merely as a delicacy, one has already made a start. All fruits have nutritional value; it does not matter which kinds you eat, where and when, as long as they land in the stomach so that nature can start building "a new body" with this unique building material.

It is, however, important for you to be certain that this is indeed what you wish to do, for as long as other avenues are attractive, it is better first to have a good look at them, for once you have started on this road there is no question of turning back.

I know that you are not a doctor, but I nevertheless wish to ask whether you think the diet would improve or aggravate low blood pressure?

I cannot venture a prediction here. I never think in terms of illness. To me there is only one illness — bad habits. It can do no harm to improve bad eating habits and then see first hand what the effects are. The fruit diet has benefited all who have tried it, provided that they did not become impatient and want to see results immediately.

The guinea-pigs for the scientific tests all benefited wonderfully by the diet, so why not give it a try? Only experience can show whether something of this kind will be beneficial or detrimental. Have your blood and general health tested before the diet and again after it; that is the only way of finding out. Surmises, guesses and fears get you nowhere if you doubt the wisdom of your actions.

People and reactions differ. A young person with minor damage to his body will soon see good results, whereas an elderly or very ill person with more damage to repair will have to wait longer for results and possibly experience more drastic reactions than would a healthier person. A depressed, tense, emotional, unstable person will see poorer results than would a calm, sober, balanced person. No two people are alike. In this game you are your only rival. You test the diet and find out for yourself whether you are better off than you were. Therein lies the joy; not in whether you are better or worse off than your neighbour.

I would like to try the fruit diet, but not if I am going to lose mass or feel weak as I have to work and do not want to become "painfully" thin.

Whoever wants to prescribe to nature is no candidate for this diet.When I started the diet, I was hopelessly underweight. If I had wanted to

prescribe to nature by taking refuge in "fattening foods" each time I lost weight, instead of welcoming the loss, I would so have obstructed nature's good work with my body that my bodily chemistry could never have been normalised. No, I had to look on patiently while my mass dropped to a bare 31.3 kg before Mother Nature had completed her purification programme and the new house could be built on sound foundations. This took months to achieve, and even if I had pleaded, protested, kicked and shouted, nature would still have gone on at a snail's pace; bur fortunately for me I waited patiently, hope was not in vain.

Once the task of reconstruction had been completed, not according to my dictates or time, but those of Mother Nature, the results were so good that I have enjoyed excellent health for twenty years. I never get headaches and never suffer from weakness or any of my old symptoms. A recent test recon-firmed that nature did a fine job.

And what did Mother Nature ask of me? Just patience. Mass loss and a period of weakness (during which I kept on working) passed. For a few months I had to endure unpleasant reactions such as nausea, dizziness, cramps, stomach aches, sinus pains, toothache and so on.

However, the less I obstructed her task by trying to resist such reactions, the better and more favourable were the results.

For a while I ate only pawpaw and salads and my migraines disappeared completely. Will other fruits have the same effect?

Every season has its own fruits, and experience has taught me that what the pawpaw achieves in August, the grape, apple or whatever can achieve in any other month. It is always best to eat each fruit when it is in season; this ensures the best results.

What goes into the making of a balanced fruit diet?Fruit is a complete diet. It is capable of holding its own, and it is not

necessary to make any calculations. When you are hungry you eat as much fruit as you like, until you have had enough. Grass-eating animals do not make calculations about their food and their condition depends solely on the condition of the grass on which they feed. When the grass is plentiful and of a good quality, their condition is excellent, but when food is scarce, dry or inferior, their condition deteriorates accordingly. The same applies to the fruitarian. His job is to obtain enough good, wholesome fruit which is so tasty that no frills or fancies are necessary to supplement the diet.

Unfortunately we in South Africa do not get the cream of our fresh products as these are destined for the export market. This is a pity, but one can only hope that we shall, for the sake of good health, get better fruit in future and a bigger variety. On an omnivorous man-made diet calculations would be neces-sary, but not when you feed like the birds.

To what extent do the seasons affect the fruit diet?The seasons provide the variety which every fruitarian seeks. Nothing is

better than enjoying fruit in season. Once it is off the menu, it takes a while before a particular fruit is available again and one is always pleased to welcome it back.

Besides the joy which the seasons bring, I also believe that each fruit makes a unique contribution to health and happiness, and that fruits follow one another in an important and food of paradise to its place of the good habits which have to be regained before that Utopia can be found.

Yes, to me and many others the diet is wroth the effort. If you start looking at it from another angle, it might also become worth the effort for you. Do not allow frustration to deprive you at this early stage of renewal of this unique food or of the final victory over bad habits.

There are so many questions about illnesses that I could write a book on them alone, but I no longer think of diseases or complaints and how they should be treated. The fruitarian thinks of health, and is always surprised to see how problems disappear as he makes progress with his change of diet. A telephone conversation:

"Never again will I eat other food!" said a cheerful voice all the way from the Transvaal. I stood with the receiver in my hand and looked out over False Bay and the colourful sails of the yachts.

"Fruit is delicious.""That's music to my ears!" said I."Why do you sound so surprised?" asked the stranger."I still hear so many complaints," I confessed."All my complaints have simply disappeared, can it be true? My headaches

are gone, my sinus troubles have cleared up, I no longer suffer from insomnia, and my unwanted bulges have also gone. I feel like a bright new penny," said

the voice enthusiastically."Whom am I speaking to?" I asked, "and for how long have you been eating

fruit now?""Let me see..." Then a pause. "Can't you remember that I rang you some

time ago to ask what I should do?" came the suddenly frustrated words. I scratched my head, for I get so many calls, and "some time ago" — when and who had it been?

"Oh, what does it really matter?" she said. "Of course," I chuckled."But I don't eat just fruit all the time. Some days I feel like something else

too. May I eat more then?""Never mind, I also have such days and then offend a little. Although fruit

has by this time become my total normal menu, there are times and days when I look for some other food — not as food, but just to satisfy a craving which descends on me out of the blue, like the time I smelt my neighbour's griddle-cakes. Do you still remember?"

"What a relief," she said.I replace the receiver and think: "Oh, how good it is to finally have company

and be part of a group"

The heavy smoker and gourmand"May we come over and see you?" asked a totally strange male voice over

the telephone. "We would like to come and chat about the fruit diet."So one night they came: a father, mother and a little girl. Mr X spoke first: "I

have often tried to get a grip on my smoking and eating habits; as you can see, I am a heavy smoker and enjoy my food, but you know how it goes."

I nodded, for don't we all know how it goes? Mrs X continued: "I don't smoke and when we go for a drive, the baby and I almost choke on the smoke or are nearly blown out of the window. After a time I didn't look forward to our drives at all. They caused tension in our relationship."

Mr X went on: "It also bothered me, but that is not all; my health suffered as a result." He explained with gestures: "Too much food, too much drink, too much smoke. It was then that I took the bull by the horns and decided to stop letting these habits ruin my marriage, my health and my happiness. I joined a no-smoking club and you will recall that I rang you about the fruit diet. That was a week ago. And after fasting for two days I have been eating nothing but fruit this week," he said proudly with satisfaction in his voice and manner.

"And?" I prompted him."I feel very well and relieved and my wife is joining me as she is so pleased

about my decision. My daughter too. Fruit has come into our home so suddenly, and we find it a great adventure. Well, we have just come along for a little chat."

That evening we chatted about everything but problems; we dreamt dreams and saw visions.

"I am going to follow the diet forever. In any event, I'd like to try. Of course,

one doesn't always know what the future holds," he said. I did not want to dampen his enthusiasm. There are a significant number of people who are indeed living on an absolute diet of fruit and nuts. They never fail to inspire me. They succeeded in doing so, so why not the dynamic Mr X?

"To me the problem is as clear as daylight," said Mr X. "I must change my habits, or face the alternative. Surely you see what I mean. Why should I torture myself by eradicating the old habits bit by bit. No, not me; however painful it is, I would rather destroy them root and branch. I took the decision and will see it through. If I should fail, well...I would have only myself to blame; but for me from now on it is going to be no smoking, no drinking and no other food than the very best."

I admired his wisdom, courage, purposefulness and faith, and I hope I bump into Mr X again one day.

"Not for me"There was a letter in front of me. I started reading."I am 44 years old and read about the fruit diet. I decided to test it as I often

get headaches, have had two operations, am overweight and don't always feel too well. The diet is definitely doing me more harm than good."

For 44 years you were used to a diet consisting of all kinds of food. You mention that you have had numerous complaints and have had two operations. Really, how can the poor fruit correct the complaints of the past 44 years in the matter of one small week? Surely this is asking too much.

If you could exercise a little patience, you might agree with the other letter I have here too.

"It is exactly one year since I started living on fruit alone. Doctors are simply amazed at my health as a result of these eating habits. My legs still ache a little, but not at all as much as they did a few months ago. I have completely forgotten about headaches and other ailments. From day to day things get better and I never intend going back to ordinary foods. I no longer find the social aspect a problem; I simply go my own way," Mr T of the Transvaal.

For some time now I have been trying to change my present eating habits. I would like to eat fruit, but just when I get into my stride I start getting cravings for my old foods. Once I have had a taste, it goes from bad to worse and before long I am right back where I started. Can you help?

This letter is just another form the many people who try hard and are discouraged by circumstances.

You are very honest. Do not think you are a born loser; just remember that happy is the man who knows the art of starting again after each defeat.

The fact that you have already come as far as having an ideal is already a victory. The fact that you have already started making a real change in your habits is another big victory, and I am certain you will also overcome this

problem. Why not try starting this time with a fast and a fruit diet for three days. The previous exercise will not be without value and then we can talk again.

The director of companiesThe doorbell rang and before me stood a middle-aged man. He was

obviously well-to-do and at the gate I noticed an expensive motor-car. I could see from his appearance that he was a victim of prosperity.

"Pardon me," he said, "for arriving without an appointment, but I have a problem."

We sat down and chatted about a variety of topics before getting down to the problem. "How is it possible for things like food and cigarettes to do this to me? I made a success of my job and my home life, and had a good standard of living. Everything has been so easy, but..." and he paused.

He held his head in his hands for a long time. "It's a hellish thing," he said impatiently.

"Would your fruit diet be able to help me?" he asked."Why not? It has helped others.""Is fruit really such a wonderful food?""To me, yes. You can lose nothing by putting it to the test and then

reaching your own conclusions.""What do you suggest?""A three-day fast and then three weeks on a diet of fresh fruit only.""And will that perform the miracle.""Let's not hazard any guesses; try it and then come and see me again."His problem again let me feel small and humble, for without grace and faith

willpower alone is not strong enough to combat the drives of the "transient" body. Fortunately he was a believer.

My desk is full of letters, the telephone is always ringing, and the doorbell regularly announces the arrival of people who are interested in this diet. Questions are asked, open discussions are held, new answers arise and friendships are formed — all around the fruit.

A new eating habit is born. To me it is the food of Eden.

CHAPTER 4What others say about the diet

Mrs Ada Wessels of Pretoria writes: I was privileged to be one of the guinea-pigs of Prof. B. Meyer of the University of Pretoria in his research project on the fruit diet. Our team had to change overnight from a diet according to which we could eat and drink anything to a diet of fruit and nuts exclusively. For interest's sake I will quote the diet as prescribed by Prof. Meyer and his team of dieticians and published in the SA Medical Journal of 20 February 1971:

Breakfast Calories1 cup of fruit juice .......................................................... 1004 portions of fruit ........................................................... 30010:30 am2 tablespoonfuls of nuts ................................................ 100

Lunch1 cup of fruit juice .......................................................... 1006 portions of fruit ........................................................... 4503.30 pm1 cup of fruit juice .......................................................... 1002 tablespoonfuls of nuts ................................................ 100

Supper7 portions of fruit ........................................................... 5252 tablespoonfuls of nuts ................................................ 1009.00 pm3 portions of fruit ........................................................... 225Total ............................................................................ 2 100

We had to keep to this diet for six months and were subjected weekly to the necessary tests. When it had been scientifically proved that one could live on fruit and nuts only and, as far as we were concerned, be better off, we as a family decided to make more use of fruit. However, it had not been easy for us as guinea-pigs to make the change immediately and I could not expect my family to do so. We therefore gradually replaced cooked dishes with fresh fruit and salads and, for example, substituted a glass of fruit juice for morning tea.

We use only fresh fruit and do not make use of dried, sugared or canned fruit. We do not drink canned or bottled fruit juices and do not add any sugar to our food. Here I have to mention that the acquisition of a juice extractor was surely the best investment we made.

Our daily menu for the past five years has been more or less as follows:

Morning: Glass of fruit juice consisting of carrot, orange and apple, or carrot, apple and grapefruit, or orange and grapefruit. Carrot juice is filling and cheap and one drinks it as soon as it is made.

Breakfast: Slices of pawpaw, pineapple rings, one avocado per person and banana or grapes, or a pear, or guavas, depending on the season.

Lunch: The same as for breakfast, but including a slice of wholewheat bread with cheese, or plain, unbuttered toast.

Supper: Fruit juice; fish in any form — grilled, steamed or as fish cakes — pineapple, pawpaw, avocado and a bowl of fresh salad consisting of lettuce, tomato, green peppers and radishes, which I sprinkle with a handful of nuts and sultanas and a pinch of onion or garlic salt and then bind with a salad dressing or mayonnaise.

You will notice that my family is not inclined to serve a bowl of fruit salad, for we enjoy having our fruit attractively arranged in a serving bowler plate. Three tastes which are particularly popular with us are pineapple, pawpaw and avocado. On our table you will always find a bowl of oranges, apples, grapes (in season) and bananas. For the nibblers there is a glass bowl of raisins, sultanas, currants and nuts.

A complete meal can be prepared in the evening within half an hour, with no cooking involved, except of course for the fish dish. To this I might add the following advantages: no blown-up, stuffed feeling, flatulence, indigestion or drowsiness and no heartburn after a meal.

As a family we keep fairly strictly to this pattern, although I sometimes, by way of a change, or perhaps on Sundays, offend with a bit of meat or chicken and a roast potato.

When I entertain formally, I do so in the ordinary, traditional way, but when serving informal and buffet meals I regularly serve salads and fruit with the meat dish and no one notices the absence of rice, pumpkin, peas or beans. On the contrary, the response is usually very favourable, for "who would ever have thought that fresh fruit could blend so well with other dishes". Prof. Meyer's research with a diet of this kind showed that no deficiencies arise in one's boday. For that reason we take no vitamin pills, tonics, medicines to ward off colds, brewer's yeast, wheat germ or anything similar.

I would now like to deal with the economic aspect of the fruit diet, since this is a question I often have to answer. As a Pretorian I naturally have no knowledge of conditions or prices in other cities or towns, although I was shocked at the prices I had to pay for inferior fruit at a fruit stall in Cape Town.

As far as I am concerned, Pretoris is the Mecca of fruit in the Republic. We are fed with fruit from Natal, lovely pineapples from Swaziland, tropical and citrus fruit from the Lowveld, and a large variety from the Cape. So it is not difficult to obtain seven portions virtually all year through, as the seasons of the various areas overlap.

I go to the market one morning a week, and I buy fruit by the box, but I also shop at the local greengrocer. Our average fruit account for a family of four adults varies from R15 tot R20 per week and our weekly purchases usually consist of:

1 box of pineapples (18 R2.5 to R4.50 fairly large ones) per box2 to 3 boxes of pawpaws R1.00 to R1.60 (six per box) per box2 pockets of oranges R0.75 to R1.20 per pocket2 trays of avocados R1.20 to R2.00(18-24 per tray) per tray1 box of apples R1.50 to R6.50 per boxbananas R1.00 to R1.50lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. R1.00 to R1.50fish R3.00 to R3.75

As the seasons change, I supplement this with fruit such as guavas, mangoes, grapes, grapefruit and naartjies. It sometimes happens that I have to pay R3.50 for a box of pineapples and pay R5,50 a fortnight later for the same amount. I have also been able to find the loveliest apples for R2.50 per box.

If my expenses on fruit seem high, you should realise that we cut out all breakfast cereals, from maize meal to the tastiest flakes. What is more, we use no bacon, eggs, jam, marmalade or any other spreads. Furthermore, we save a great deal on milk, butter, oils, tinned foods, sauces, meat, puddings, chutneys, spices and pickles. It sometimes surprises one how many condiments one notices in the trolleys of housewives in supermarkets.

I want to state very clearly that we do not fanatically disapprove of other foods, but are merely very impressed with the benefits of our present eating pattern. I regularly serve my guests a bowl of fruit salad with a slice of toast for breakfast and invariably the response is "That was delicious!"

The question of entertaining is, of course, a matter close to the heart of any proud housewife. "How can I set a table and prepare a meal consisting of fruit only?" or "How dull and monotonous!" are typical utterances. Let me set you right at once — I do not think you can set a table more attractively as regards colour, flavour and texture than with a fine assortment of fruit! It might be a good idea to test the skill of housewives by means of a competition.

I would also like to raise the question of marketing. Fruit is not cheap, and one likes to obtain value for money. I do not mind paying more for fruit of a better quality, but there is nothing quite as upsetting as opening a tray of pears

or grapes and finding that half of them are overripe or rotten. One often finds too that fruit which is not ripe when bought, does not ripen afterwards. As time goes on one gets to know one's producers, and there are some producers whose products I will never again touch on account of their poor quality. Then one also finds that when a certain fruit is scarce it is snapped up by a few greengrocers, who take the whole consignment, while the agents disregard the housewife who wishes to buy two or three boxes. What is more, I think that fruit is handled far too much. There should definitely be better control over prices, quality, packaging and distribution, and let the producers who cheat with poor products get their just deserts. Such beautiful fruit is exported. Is it not possible for us to share in the bounty of our own country?

To those considering changing over to this eating pattern, I would like to say just this: the vast major improvement in the family's health makes it worth the trouble over and over again. And gone are those hours at the stove, and the greasy dishes and cutlery. However, make the change gradually to this healthy way of life and remember: it has been proved that half a pawpaw or half an avocado has more nutritional value than a medium-sized pumpkin, a cabbage or a cauliflower!

In conclusion: the fruit diet is so easy that you will be surprised how quickly your family adapts to it. You will be even more pleasantly surprised about the benefits it holds.

Mrs D. writes:The first day of my new, healthy life began as follows. At seven in the

morning, a glass of water. While preparing my husband's breakfast, I felt so much like having a piece of bacon that I broke off a small tip and put it on my tongue! This helped somewhat. For the rest of the day I was brave and full of enthusiasm and drank glass after glass of cold water and quite enjoyed it. Had a slight headache and, believe me, towards evening I couldn't wait for bedtime to arrive so that I could rather go to sleep!

I felt surprisingly well on the second day after the first glass of water! An hour later I placed a lovely, polished apple on a plate, got into bed and munched it slowly and with relish while admiring the sea through my window. No apple ever tasted better! What is more, one's stomach feels so cool and satisfied — after all the years of overloading it with wrong combinations — and so refreshingly clean. After a few exercises I took a cold shower and then felt as if I could move mountains.

Third day: I was not weak or hungry at all — just full of energy and enthusiasm. I chose an apple and a banana for breakfast and once again ate my food slowly, chewed it well and thoroughly enjoyed it. At ten o'clock I found a cup of rooibos tea (without sugar) with lemon juice less enjoyable. Then I greeted lunch enthusiastically — yes, the hours had indeed been counted. At 12 am I could become quite lyrical about a bowl of salad with avocado pear, not to mention the lovely raisins, dates and nuts!

I even dreaded finishing the food, for believe me it was a meal fit for a king. Absolutely delicious! For supper: pineapple and two sweet oranges.

The fourth day was a repetition of the previous one.Now I must say, the first day was the most difficult; but if one perseveres,

one is soon over the worst.

Mrs C. writes:"On 5 September I said: Thus far and no further; now I am also going to

become a fruit eater. I have found it easy going so far. It is only when I move into social activities that I offend. I did not even tell my family what I was doing; they caught on, but said nothing. At this stage I have a tremendous desire for nuts. Apart from that I feel very fit on my diet of fruit and salads. I already feel much better, and have more energy, am easier to get on with, more relaxed and more enthusiastic about life.

"For years I wanted to become a vegetarian, but I just could not bid farewell to meat. But fruit has brought me the necessary compensation."

Mrs L.R. writes:"Since I started the fruit diet, my health has shown a wonderful

improvement. Without any aid my heart-spasms disappeared, and even if I have only one kidney, it is in top form. My resistance to infection and disease has improved greatly. Now I too can say: Thank the Lord, it's good to be alive.

"I mostly eat fruit, salads and raw vegetables, as well as nuts and plenty of fruit juice."

Mrs J. writes:"I immediately saw the fruit diet as the answer to all my problems, and

decided to start it. I must confess that I did not have the willpower to make the change overnight and decided that it would have to be done gradually.

"At present fruit constitutes about 75-80 per cent of my diet. For two meals a day I eat only fruit and to the third I try to add as much fruit as possible and as little other food as possible. It is here that I require most of my will power, as this is the main meal with the family.

"Although at this stage I am still very far from my goal, I believe that I will reach it by disciplining myself and slowly but surely moving towards it — with help from above. What means most to me is that I gained perspective and now know which way I am going.

"I wonder whether you would believe me if I told you that at this early stage I am already experiencing positive results. For three weeks now I have been eating as much fruit and nuts as possible, and I have more strength and energy than I have had in years. Is this possible?

"I was so poorly and so full of despair, not to speak of my impatience at home. Now even these things have improved. I don't expect anyone to believe all this, but deep within me I am jubilant."

CHAPTER 5Research yields bombshell of a surprise. Paradise diet

uncovered by scientist

The Prestigious New York Times newspaper, in its May 15, 1979 issue, surprised your editor more by printing an article than the surprise they express by the findings revealed.

The gist of this article concerns research done by an anthropologist Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

Dr. Walker has come to the startling conclusion that early humans were fruit eaters - not just fruit eaters, but exclusively and only fruit eaters - eaters of nothing but fruit. This comes as quite a bombshell from a noted publication that has a vested interest in a heavy meat-eating society.

By careful examination of fossil teeth and fossilized remains of humans with the aid of electron microscopes and other sophisticated tools, Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were fruitarians.

Hygienists are not necessarily fruitarians, but all will tell you that humans are, by physiology and structure, frugivores. A cursory study of biology will reveal this, even if written by meat-eating professors, which most of our biologists are.

Humans Remain Frugivores Despite Omnivorous EatingThe scope of the article is rather far flung. They trace humans through

history as expanding to herbiage and nuts and, finally, to meat as a full-fledged omnivore.

But the essence of the article is that though we undertook omnivorous eating practices, our structure and physiology have not changed - we remain biologically a species of fruit eaters.

Our dietetic character is established by our disposition toward fruits. Our natural diet has great eye and taste appeal. It passes from the stomach in digestible from in from 10 minutes to 30 minutes after ingestion.

Contrast this with concentrated fat and protein foods which take three to five hours to pass out of the stomach.

We do not have the four stomachs that herbivores usually have. This rules out most herbiage.

We have only one starch-splitting enzyme versus a multitude of them in omnivores and starch-eating animals. Our ptyalin is very limited. This rules us out as starchy foods which includes grains or cereals. We are not graminivores.

Neither are we carnivores. It is repugnant to our nature to kill and eat an animal while it is yet warm and bloody, to eat its brains, heart, offal and blood as true carnivores do. True carnivores do not chew meat - they have in their

digestive tracts a hydrochloric acid so concentrated, about 1100% more so than ours, that it would digest our hands quickly if swallowed whole.

Our stomach acids are so weak, we digest meat poorly even if we chew it thoroughly. Even then, we cannot handle uric acid except at great expense to our vitality and well- being. Cholesterol plays havoc with our circulatory system. So don't think we're natural meat eaters. We're suffering very dearly for our dietary indiscretions - America has more sick people than any country in the world.

Can you imagine the dismay with which our meat and dairy industry, not to mention our extensive junk food industry, will view such damaging propaganda? Can you not see how many advertisers will have second thoughts about placing advertising in the New York Times?

Well, it doesn't quite work like that. The junk food advertising in the New York Times amounts to about nil. It is a newspaper that "prints all the news that's fit to print." It serves a cultured, aware audience.

But one of the surprising things that came out of this article is its attribution of the harmfulness of our shift from our natural diet of fruits to other items of food that range from eggs and insects to milk and meats, that range from roots to cereals.

I have checked with many Life Scientists/Natural Hygienists in other areas of the country. Not one has seen nary a mention of these universally significant findings. I've examined our local papers. You'd never know about it. After all, our local papers serve the industries that a general knowledge and observance of these findings would destroy outright

Most Hygienists/Life Scientists do not make sweet fruits their primary item of diet Few do, though some do. Your editor's diet has been over 95% fruitarian. Tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, avocados, and other such items are fruits.

Actually, we all naturally have a "sweet tooth" and that is attributable to our natural love affair with sweet fruits. A baby will eat sweet fruits and their juices with relish from day one of its existence, even though it should be fed only its mother's milk.

When I was a youngster, I was accused of wanting to eat only desserts and leaving the "good, substantial" food to waste. Now I'm intrigued by all-dessert meals! In fact, I eat so many of them now I sometimes go days with nothing else. Now that the melon season is upon us, plus all the other goodies, I'm afraid my "vegetable" salads and non-sweet fruits are going to take a back seat. In the just terminating mulberry season, your editor ate only mulberries for two or three days running on several occasions.

The salutary truths contained in these findings will be hedged by most who learn of it. It will be said that fruits do not supply us with sufficient proteins or nutrients or no longer do. Much will be said, but widespread opinion does not negate the truth one whit. Even many Hygienists/Life Scientists will pooh-pooh an all-fruit diet despite all the evidence that affirms fruit as our only natural food.

If you don't go along with an all-fruit diet, then why not add some greens, nuts and seeds? But you should make your diet of mostly fruit. You'll attain to a high state of health, mental well-being, and functional vigor as a fruitarian. If you eat a salad every second and third day with a protein food, such as nuts or seeds, you'll be assured of more than adequate nutriment.

CHAPTER 6Is an all-fruit diet unhealthy?

Some charges made against fruits and fruit-eaters

Most Natural Hygienists/Life Scientists may be called timid fruitarian idealists. They are all too willing to admit, even proclaim, that we are naturally frugivores and that our ancestors lived either on nearly all or completely fruitarian diets. "A fruit meal is the ideal," they espouse. Yet most of these same people are unwilling to try subsisting on fruits!

Some Hygienists think we must supplement the fruit diet with cheese; others think we must have some vegetables. Still others think fruits are great but should be supplemented by steamed vegetables, baked potatoes, steamed or baked roots, and so on. Others think fruits should be complemented with nuts (which are also fruits botanically but not in reality as fruits consist solely of foods that ripen which were created specifically as food to attract consumption by a biological symbiont).

The "consensus" diet that Hygienists advocate consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Nevertheless, many Hygienists eat seeds, nuts, sprouts, green leaves, stalks, stems, tubers and grains almost to the exclusion of fruits! These peoples' fruit intake largely consists of avocados, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash.

When asked why they do not eat more fruit despite giving lip service to fruit as the ideal, most Hygienists will tell you that although fruit may be alright for short periods of time as a "cleansing" or "elimination" diet, it is not to be taken except as a luxury. These are the charges made against fruits:

a. Fruits are protein poor.b. Fruits have too many free acids,c. Those who subsist on fruits become neurotics.d. Fruits are too poor in iron, and anemia results if only fruits are eaten.e. Those who eat only fruits will suffer nutritional imbalances and

deficiencies.33f. Fruit eaters cannot maintain weight and are too thin.g. Fruit eaters become over-alkaline and often suffer alkalosis.h. Fruits are deficient in calcium as well as protein and result in stunted

growth in youngsters.i. Fruits, especially dried fruits, have too much sugar. Taken together, these

statements sound like quite an indictment.

Fruits are Protein PoorThe charge is made that fruits are protein poor. It is true that if you compare

a banana in the dry state with its 5% protein content to a soybean in the dry state with a 35% protein content, the banana is, indeed, protein poor. But the protein content of any food has relevance only to our need of it as an item of diet. So we must understand our need for protein relative to our diet.

If you try to eat the protein of soy beans raw, you can't manage it. If you cook it you destroy (deaminate) the protein and it becomes putrefactive soil for bacteria which beget a whole train of poisons. (These poisons are known as indole, skatole, mercaptans, cadaverine, putrescine, nervine, ammonia, methane gas, hydrogen sulfide, muscarine, and yet others). If these poisons are absorbed from the ileum and cecum, and many are, they give rise to the intoxication that causes ailments, sicknesses, or diseases.

Of course we don't get proteins from fruits as proteins. When ripe, fruits are in a pre-digested state. The carbohydrates are delivered to the consumer as fructose and glucose. The protein complement is yielded as ready-to- absorb amino acids. And fruits deliver fats as simple fatty acids - monoglycerides and glycerol.

As to the charge that fruits have no protein or inadequate protein, we need point only to the fallacy devised by the meat trust to ensnare their unwitting servants called nutritionists and, of course, the population at large. But this propaganda is negated as follows.

A growing human baby gets a mono diet of its mother's milk for many months, even a year, before it touches any other food. Mother's milk for her rapidly developing infant contains all its nutrient needs. But, alas, her milk contains only 1.1% protein!

Surely no one can argue that a grownup can require more protein than a growing child relative to its weight or as a percentage of its diet. If anything, the grownup who has attained full development requires less protein than a nursing tot. A grown person might get adequate protein on as little as half a percent of his or her dietary protein content.

The RDA for protein is said to be 56 grams daily for an average man of 150 pounds. This figure is well over twice that established by tests by Dr. Chittenden of Yale, Dr. Mark Hegsted of Harvard, or Dr. Hinhede in Denmark and many others. Further, there are groups of physically robust people in the Caribbean who thrive on an average intake of about 15 grams of protein daily. (They eat cassava or manioc). Keeping in mind that the body obtains over 90% of its protein needs by recycling its proteinaceous wastes, it becomes somewhat evident that protein needs in humans have been overblown. The meat, dairy, poultry and fish industries have made their mark, even on those who reject animal products as food.

Can we continue to say that fruits are protein poor? In view that if protein in fruits constitute one percent of our diet our protein needs are amply met, then fruits are protein adequate. When we've eaten some 2,250 calories worth of almost any fruit except apples, we've also ingested some 25 to 40 grams of

protein. Inasmuch as most fruits do contain all the essential amino acids, I would adjudge that fruits meet human needs for protein amply.

History bears out beyond refutation that humans have been fruit eaters during their entire sojourn on earth, excepting a period beginning during the ice ages. Even then, a preponderance of our ancestors still ate fruits. Most migrated south to warmer climates and continued to eat fruits. Grain eating is not more than 10,000years old. Meat eating, though much older than that, was mostly confined to northerly peoples.

Almost all mythology is built around trees and climatic factors that affected trees. Only relatively recent mythologies connect humans to grain culture and animal husbandry.

Fruits Have Too Many Free AcidsThe charge that fruits have too many free acids is false and rather

pointless. Humans are primarily sweetfruit eaters. Fruits have no free acids. All are organic. Vinegar, cheese and fermented milks are substances with free acids, namely acetic and lactic acids. Grapefruits, plums, sour cherries, sour grapes, lemons, limes and other such acidic fare do not have "free" acids.The human body metabolizes most acids in fruits very well. Benzoic acid, tannic acid, oxalic acid and prussic acid, none of which are free acids and all of which are rare in fruits, are among those acids that give humans metabolic problems. Humans handle citric, tartaric and malic acids very well. These are the primary fruit acids. Perhaps the occasions when fruit acids give problems occur when acid fruits such as lemons, strawberries, pineapples or grapefruit are eaten along with sweet fruits such as bananas, dates, figs, raisins, persimmons or non-fruit fare.

Those Who Subsist on Fruits Become NeuroticsThe third charge that those who subsist on fruits become neurotics is

ridiculous. As a 20-year fruitarian I am proof against the charge! If fruit is, as we contend, a perfectly wholesome food furnishing all the needs of human life, then it will occasion nothing but great health.

While we are the first to affirm that nervous malfunctions and neurosis have physiological bases, we also point out that these problems stem from toxicosis in almost every such case. They often, but not always, precede the neurosis of which the world is so full. Most neuroses are complicated by anxieties, stresses, insecurities, worries and other emotional disruptions begotten by an inhumane social system.

We have encountered millions of neurotics, and I daresay few or none were fruit eaters. Unfortunately, our psychologists do not recognize the physical bases of neuroses and give credence almost completely to emotional, social, economic and mental factors.

Physical derangements often also result in mental derangements. A toxic body adversely affects its mind also. Purified bodies suffer neither mental nor

physical disturbances. Hence the charge that fruits cause neurotics is a baseless charge which has never been substantiated in a single case. No studies or control group studies have ever been made. Fruits are the one category of foods that have absolutely no toxic components. Isn't it odd that those who peddle and advocate fare with high toxicity make the charge against the only food that isn't toxic?

There are fruit-eating societies of humans in this world and descriptions of them bespeak the most peaceable, congenial and harmonious dispositions of any peoples on earth.

Fruits Are Too Poor in Iron and Cause AnemiaThe charge that fruits are too poor in iron and cause anemia is likewise

without foundation. The body recycles about 95% of its iron supply and needs very little from the outside. It is said that our RDA of iron is some 10 milligrams daily for men and 15 milligrams for women. This, like other RDAs, is some two to three times higher than established need. Nevertheless, oranges sufficient to meet our caloric needs supply about twenty milligrams of iron daily. In fact, if you compared all the fruits and their iron content, you'd find every one meeting the RDA for iron with surfeits when eaten in sufficient amount to meet caloric needs. A food that might be said to be deficient in iron by these RDAs is, of all things, a mother's milk.

Fruits are charged as being vitamin B-12 poor. The same can be said of all foods, even the foods that animals eat. Only meats, fermented and putrefied foods such as cheese, and certain kinds of algae have what is termed sufficient vitamin B-12.

But if animal fare such as grasses, leaves, grains, herbs and fruits do not furnish animals with vitamin B-12, how do their organs come to be so rich in it? How come the organs of fruit-eating primates are rich in it? How is it that fruitarian societies are not anemic from lack of vitamin B-12?

The truth is that humans, like all other animals, obtain ample supplies of vitamin B-12 from bacterial production in their intestines. Even garlic eaters usually do not destroy enough of their symbiotic bacterial flora to deny themselves of an adequate supply of vitamin B-12. If you number the anemics, you'll find most are meat eaters! Further, almost all have lost ability to secrete intrinsic factor, the transport medium for Vitamin B-12.

So I adjudge the charge that fruit eaters are anemic to be without any substantive evidence whatsoever.

Those Who Eat Only Fruits Suffer Nutritional Imbalances and DeficienciesThe charge that fruit eaters will suffer nutritional imbalances and

deficiencies likewise finds no basis; in fact, fruits eaten judiciously, according to their season, furnish us with every nutrient factor, known and unknown, in plenteousness. Those ancient Greeks whom we admire so much for their statuesque bodies, were fruit eaters. Most ate heavily of apples, dates,

oranges, olives, figs and grapes. The Greek and Roman gods are ascriptions born of reverence for fruit trees and food-bearing plants.

Fruit Eaters Cannot Maintain Weight and Are Too ThinThe charge that fruit eaters are too thin is not borne out by even the

simplest investigation. Personally, I've gone down into the 120-pound range and came back to the 150- pound range with excellent muscular development on a diet almost entirely of fruits. My wife has to watch her intake of heavy calorie fruit foods, especially nuts, lest she become too heavy.

As before pointed out, the Greeks thrived on fruitarian diets. Pythagoras, one of the giants of Grecian literature, philosophy and mathematics, was a fruitarian and had a whole school of followers who, likewise, were fruitarians. Actually, the teachings of Pythagoras very much parallel the teachings of Gautama Buddha, whose teachings Pythagoras was conversant with. Buddha was, in essence, a tree worshipper as were fruitarian societies. Bacchus is portrayed as heavily overweight, and this is attributed to fig gluttony.

Fruit Eaters Become Over-Alkaline and Suffer AlkalosisThe charge that fruit eaters are over-alkaline and often suffer alkalosis is,

likewise, baseless. We humans can harmlessly excrete excess alkaline substances, but if we get excess acid-forming substances as from meats, animal products, cereal foods, etc., we really have problems. The body must rob its bones, teeth and other alkaline structures for the alkalis, mostly calcium, necessary to neutralize the acids generated from acid-forming foods. The maker of this "alkalosis" charge simply ignored physiology. Everyone is fruitarian by nature and for them to make such charges against fruit is playing into the hands of their commercial exploiters. Talk about intellectual integrity!

Fruits Are Deficient in Calcium as Well as Protein and Results in Stunted Growth in Youngsters

Fruits are said to be deficient in calcium. To investigate this, I made charts of a number of fruits and their composition. Our fuel needs can be met amply by fruits. Calcium and a plethora of other nutrients are components of every gram of fruit food. When we have eaten sufficient fruit to supply our caloric needs, say about 2,250 calories, how much of our RDA for calcium have we met? The RDA is set at 800 milligrams per day for a 150-pound man. This, like other RDAs, is some three to four times too high. Nevertheless, let's look at some fruit foods and their calcium content when 2,250 calories worth have been consumed.

Oranges, a widely consumed fruit, has about 2,050 milligrams of calcium, 2-1/2 times the RDA. Apples have 315 mg. Apricots have 782 mg. Cantaloupes have 1.078mg. Figs have 1,130 mg. Bananas have 224 mg., and banana-eating societies have excellent bone formation by all standards. Grapes have 440 mg., dates have 530 mg., mangos 370 mg., pineapples 785

mg., watermelon 640 mg. and so on down the line. Obviously, fruits supply us amply with our calcium needs. And the saying that fruit eaters suffer stunted growth does not withstand serious inquiry. As previously noted, statuesque Greeks were fruit eaters.

While it is true that fruit eaters are smaller than their meat-eating, milk-drinking, poison-ingesting counterparts, we must recognize the disease called giantism. Our average height today is nearly a foot higher than it was in such ancestors as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc. Even seven footers, rather common today, only very rarely existed a mere 50 years ago.

Fruits, Especially Dried Fruits, Have Too Much SugarThe charge that fruits give us too much sugar is made by those who have

not weighed or cogitated upon the considerations.First, about 90% of our nutrient requirements are for monosaccharides or

simple sugars for energy. Until you've met this need, it is ridiculous to cry "too much sugar."

Sugar in fruits comes to us pre-digested, hence it can't be beyond our digestive capacity no matter how much you eat!

If we eat "too much sugar," that is, caloric values exceeding our needs, then obviously we've overeaten. In the case, of sugars either the surplus is stored as fats or harmlessly excreted.

Let's look at starches, often called complex carbohydrates. These must be heated to be broken down from long chain polysaccharides or starch. Heating dextrinizes starches. However, because there are no immediate sugars to absorb for appestat control, overeating of dextrinized starches is endemic. And many athletes intentionally eat heavily of starchy foods (dextrinized by heat) as in "carbohydrate loading."

All these dextrinized starches are converted to glucose. So we're right back to where we started. We're getting excess sugar if we eat beyond need. Only in the case of heated carbohydrates, our fungal and bacterial flora can readily ferment it, thus intoxicating us. Uncooked sugars are not fermentable until they have been oxidized. The body has ample opportunity to absorb them long before oxidation will have occurred in normal digestion.

Thus, upon inquiry, the charge of "excessive sugar" vanishes.

Build Your Confidence in the Fruitarian DietaryFruit eaters are not usually fat, brawny hulks as are grain, milk and meat

eaters. The question arises: Are these common conditions amongst our populace a criterion of health or pathology?

Murray Rose, an Australian who set swimming record after swimming record, was primarily a fruit eater, though he partook of some seaweeds and vegetable fare.

Now if we fruitarians were to start making charges against those who want

to eat "exciting" foods such as cooked dishes often laden with condiments, vegetables, cereals and even dairy products such as yogurts and cheeses, the charges could be well substantiated from research literature.

Wrong foods create toxemia or toxicosis. The illnesses that beset almost all Americans amply attest to this fact. Even those who pride themselves on a vegetarian diet or a healthful diet or even a hygienic diet often find themselves suffering toxic conditions.

Toxicosis arises out of practices that cause toxins to be ingested, generated and/or retained. Fruit eating is universally said to be a cleansing or eliminating diet and is recognized for its non-toxic nature.

Thus, you can eat fruits in complete confidence that your nutrient needs are being adequately met!

CHAPTER 7Requirements that our natural foods must meet

Every species has its biological adaptations. This applies to all areas of every creature's life, including its diet. Each species has its peculiar development that disposes it to a particular lifestyle and dietary. Humans are no exceptions.

Other articles herein show that humans have been and remain constitutionally frugivores - humans are adapted only to a diet of fruits. This means we should eat no meat or animal products, as we are not carnivores or omnivores; no cereals or grain products, as we're not graminivores; nor anything else that is not consonant with the human frugivorous constitution.

Foods that ideally meet human needs have a certain readily ascertainable character. Careful consideration of human nutritive requirements as found in foods can result in the establishment of qualities that foods must possess to be our ideal or natural foods.

For example, human physiological requirements from foods can be fairly accurately stated as follows:

1. About 90% of our solid intake should be fuel for energy;2. About 5% of our solid intake should be for meeting our amino acid

(protein) needs;3. About 2% of our solids intake should be of mineral matter to meet our

need for minerals; and4. About 3% of our intake of solids is to meet our needs for essential fatty

acids, vitamins, auxones and other food factors, known and unknown.Inasmuch as water and innocuous fiber are neutral factors, they receive no

consideration other than to note that we naturally require sufficient water in our foods to meet our needs. Therefore, we are talking about our nutrient requirements relative to the dry weight of foods or foods without water content. While our diet should consist nearly all of foods with water content as bestowed by nature, for the purposes of this discussion this is not considered.

There are twelve primary considerations that a natural human food must meet. Our natural foods:

1. Must be nontoxic. We should not poison ourselves.2. Must have aesthetic or sensory appeal. It should be beautiful to the eye,

tantalize the sense of smell, and be a gustatory delight!3. Must be relished in its natural raw state as taken from nature.4. Must be digested easily.5. Must be digested efficiently.6. Must have amino acid adequacy.7. Must have vitamin adequacy.

8. Must supply mineral salts amply.9. Must supply our needs for essential fatty acids.10. Must supply our needs for caloric values.11. Must be water-sufficient and meet our needs for water under most

conditions.12. Must be alkaline in metabolic reaction, as a general rule.

Let us elaborate on these 12 qualities in a food and observe how traditional foods fail to meet these requirements.

Our Natural Foods Must Be NontoxicObviously, we eat for nourishment. Poisons are not the elements of health.

Thus, we must reject foods that have injurious substances. Prunes, for instance, have benzoic acid, a non-metabolizable acid for which we have no enzymes to digest. As a result, the body rushes prunes to the colon along with other undigested food. Hence their reputation as laxatives was created.

This non-toxicity requirement rules out eating fruits in any condition other than ripened, with some exceptions: cucumbers, peppers, etc. This rules out the whole field of condiments and herbs. All have toxic components. For instance, aloe and comfrey have aloin. Pyrrolizidinek, a hepatic poison, is also in comfrey. Onions and garlic have highly toxic non-metabolizable mustard oil which contains deadly isothiocyanate. Additionally, they contain the toxin allicin (isothiocyanate). Meats have non-metabolizable uric acid. Carnivores and omnivores secrete the enzyme uricase that breaks down uric acid. Humans do not. In humans this poison causes osteoporosis, dental cavities (which are osteoporosis of the teeth) and is a prime cause of arthritic and rheumatic complaints. Cereal products contain phytic acid and wheat has gluten, components that we cannot digest. Milk products have lactose and casein which we cannot break down because, after about age three, we cease to secrete lactase and rennin, the enzymes that break them down. Hence, these milk components cause problems. That's a moot point anyway as milk heated for 30 minutes at 160 degrees F. is no longer a food anyway. It has been rendered very toxic in end products. It's no wonder that milk is considered a number one cause of allergy. The body properly objects to substances that are toxic.

Condiments are indigestible and interfere with digestion. Alcohol, vinegar, salt, black, red and white pepper, MSG, basil, oregano, and a long list of other seasonings have irritating and toxic elements (excitants). They are often absorbed by the body without digestion and wreak havoc within the vital domain.

Foods that have been cooked have been rendered toxic. This is easily demonstrated, for leukocytosis results after a meal containing cooked foods. Cooked foods have had their organic elements, especially minerals, rendered inorganic, thus toxic. For example, we need iodine, iron, arsenic, selenium,

copper, phosphorus and many other minerals for nutritive purposes. In their organic state as in uncooked foods we can use them. But when cooking has reduced them to ash or an inorganic state, they're just as poisonous as if taken from sea-water, soil, or rock.

Luscious ripe fruits have no toxic factors whatsoever. When we eat them, we experience only harmony and peace in the digestive tract and feel great!

Our Natural Foods Have Aesthetic or Sensory AppealIf you were in a state of nature without the aid of fire, cook-stove, mixers,

blenders and other agencies that alter foods, what would appeal to you as food you'd eat? Let us say you had before you chickens and cattle, rice and wheat grains, some potatoes and cabbages plus some fruits such as red delicious apples, ripened yellow bananas, a plethora of red, yellow, black and purple grapes ripe from vine, melons of all kinds and oranges.

Would you grab a chicken with your bare hands, crush it and start eating it, flesh, skin, blood, bones, offal and all, as carnivores do? Could you do that?

Would you suckle the cow?Would you start chewing on the hard grains of wheat or rice?Would you relish the potatoes raw in their starchy condition?Would you eat the cabbage and meet your needs on it. Do you think you'd

get any calories out of its fibrous leaves?Or would you find the fruits delightful to the eye and smell? Would your

olfactory senses delight in the smell of ripe bananas or in the smell of blood and offal? Would your senses guide you to a redolent melon or draw you to the cow and her smell of dung?

Those foods to which we are biologically adapted have great eye appeal, being beautiful to behold. Likewise, they tantalize the sense of smell in their natural state. That which appeals to you as food by appearance, taste and smell, as nature delivers it up to you, is your natural food.

Our Natural Foods Must be Gustatory DelightsFoods of our biological/physiological adaptation are keenly relished in their

natural state. In nature, we were without containers, tools, fire and appliances. We were fruit gatherers and consumers exclusively. There is nothing in nature that can be appreciated in its uncooked ripe state in the way that fruits can be relished.

Our Natural Food Must be Easy of DigestionPerhaps no other food in nature digests so easily and quickly as a

watermelon. If you eat a large amount of succulent watermelon, you'll be making your first trip to the commode within 30 to 40 minutes, an indication of the rapidity with which your digestive system handled it.

On the other hand, if you eat a piece of flesh, it may be in the stomach for four to five hours! By that time, it may be putrefying as much as it is digesting.

Why should this be so?Foods of our natural adaptation are readily absorbed and assimilated. We

can absorb only monosaccharides such as fructose and glucose, amino acids and lipids. Other food elements are absorbed as a part of these three basics. In the case of watermelon, no digestion is necessary. It is already in the form of the monosaccharides fructose and glucose that are easily absorbed and used. Meat is in the form of fats and complex proteins. Both fats and proteins take from four to six hours to break down into lipids and amino acids. This process occurs very quickly in the digestive tract of a carnivore that secretes copious amounts of hydrochloric acids, lipidase, pepsin, etc.

Thus you can see that fruits, which contain mostly monosaccharides in the form of glucose and fructose, are the foods that we handle most quickly and easily.

Should you eat a starch food, the body must laboriously convert it to glucose before the body can absorb it. This process also takes quite some time. The conversion of starch to glucose is a very complicated digestive task for which humans are poorly equipped. We have only one starch- splitting enzyme, ptyalin (salivary amylase and/or pancreatic amylase) whereas true starch eaters have several starch- splitting enzymes.

Our Natural Foods are Most Efficiently Digested and UtilizedEase of digestion necessarily implies efficiency of digestion. However,

there is another aspect of efficiency. Food contains a certain energy potential. To derive this energy, the body must expend energy to obtain it. The ratio of the energy obtained from a food relative to the energy expended in its metabolization determines the ratio of digestive efficiency.

For instance, we expend a mere 30 calories of energy in the process of appropriation, chewing, absorbing, transporting and assimilating 400 calories of watermelon. On the other hand, we must expend about 280 calories in the digestion of meat to obtain 400 calories of fat. The efficiency with which we handle foods with monosaccharides versus the inefficiency with which we handle protein foods indicates most emphatically the types of food to which we are naturally adapted. In these examples, we may say the watermelon is 92.5% efficient and meat is handled with an efficiency of about 30%.

In processing food for use, we expend two kinds of energy: Nerve energy and metabolic energy (which is further divisible into chemical and mechanical energies). In processing foods to which we are biologically adapted, as in watermelon, very little nerve energy is expended. When the body is given digestive tasks as difficult as meat, tremendous amounts of nerve energy are used. In fact, so much nerve energy is involved in handling meat and its toxic load that the body is distressed. This is observable in the stimulated feelings experienced after meat eating that are similar to caffeine ingestion. Later a depression, letdown or "hangover" may ensue. More sleep is required to help recoup the extra nerve energy expended in handling the meat and its toxic

components.If we were to depend on meat for energy, we would not only have to eat

correspondingly greater amounts, but the body would suffer because of its frenzied activities in dealing with proteins and its decomposition by-products, uric acid and other toxic substances. Further, not being equipped to handle meat, we'd experience acid indigestion due to the acid reaction of meat in metabolism. This reaction further distresses the body and causes it to draw upon its alkaline reserves. If the reserves are nonexistent, as they usually are in meat-eating humans, the bones and teeth are robbed for base minerals in order to neutralize uric acid and the acid end-products.

Our Natural Foods Must Supply Our Protein RequirementsWhat? You mean watermelons are adequate in protein? Yes, more than

adequate! Almost every fruit you can name has more amino acids (protein) than we actually need. Can any sane person insist that a grownup adult needs more protein than a growing baby? Human milk contains only about 1.1% protein, about 7.5% by dry weight. Watermelon contains 7% dry weight! Protein need be only about 5% of a food's dry weight to meet our needs. Most fruits adequately meet this need.

The body maintains an amino acid pool that carries surplus amino acids. Further, the body normally recycles about 90% of its protein wastes through the processes of pinocytosis and phagocytosis. This is all to indicate that the much touted requirement of 70 to 100 grams of protein a day is a meat-and-dairy-industry-fostered myth. Our actual protein needs are only 20 to 30 grams per day. We operate most efficiently within this range of protein intake. A daily intake of more than this amount begins to stress the body, even if it is taken from non-animal sources.

Our Natural Foods Must Amply Supply Our Vitamin NeedsFruits supply more vitamins than we can possibly use! Some 30 vitamins

have been determined to be needed in the diet, and fruits supply them all many times beyond our need when we have met our caloric requirements.

For instance, watermelon sufficient to yield 2,000 calories, about a day's use by an active man, would also yield about 48,000 I.U. of Vitamin A, about 12 times the daily RDA. Further, it would yield about 1,100 milligrams of vitamin C, some 20 times the RDA and about fifty times the actual need. The case is similar for almost every other vitamin on the list.

Fruit supplies us with all vitamins in their best form. If we took all our vitamin requirements quantitatively for a whole year, all of them together in their pure form would not fill a thimble. Commercial interests have vastly overblown and misrepresented our vitamin situation in order to perpetrate a profitable fraud upon us. A reading of the labels of even the most "natural" of vitamins sold in the market place reveals that they are about 98% of synthetic origin. Even vitamins extracted totally from natural sources are worthless out

of context with their food. Synthetic vitamins are totally unusable and, in fact, give drug effects.

Our Natural Foods Must Supply Our Needs for Organic MineralsOur only true source of minerals is from the food we eat. All other minerals

taken into the body, whether from supplements (which are inorganic), from water, from sea-water (which is so toxic with minerals sailors prefer death by thirst than from sea-water poisoning) and from cooked foods (cooking bursts cells and destroys the organic context of minerals: inorganic minerals are responsible for most of the leukocytosis that occurs after eating cooked foods), are unusable and pathogenic.

Fruits contain ample mineral salts. The RDAs for minerals are several times our actual needs. Even so, all the RDAs added together do not amount to eight grams daily. A day's supply of watermelon contains some 24 grams of minerals, about three times our need. Peeled oranges also contain about 24 grams when 2,000 calories are taken. Our daily RDA of calcium, for instance, is 800 milligrams. Oranges supply over 1,600 milligrams. And so it goes for all the minerals down the line for almost every fruit: Our needs are amply met.

Our Natural Foods Must Meet Our Needs for Essential Fatty AddsTraditional nutritional science teaches that we must get three fatty acids

from our diet. The body synthesizes its needs otherwise. These essential fatty acids were said to be arachidonic, linolenic and linoleic. Today only linoleic is said to be essential. They are contained amply in fruits!

Our total fat need from the diet is so small as to constitute less than 1% of our diet. To give some indication of the adequacy of fruits in fat, let's again consider the watermelon. It contains some 16 grams of fat when eaten to the extent of our caloric needs for a day. That amounts to about 3-1/2% of intake. Fats are a secondary source of energy.

Our Foods Must Supply Us With Our Caloric NeedsOn this score alone, fruits win all the plaudits. As well as meeting our every

other need adequately, fruits amply supply us with our calorie requirements. Nothing else that can be relished in the raw state can supply our caloric needs as well as fruits.

Our energies are best supplied by carbohydrates. Fats are a poor secondary source of energy and proteins are a last resort source of energy. Even so, over 100% of the energy obtained through deamination must be expended in the breakdown.

There are two types of carbohydrates: simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates consist of fruits that are possessed of monosaccharides, that is, primarily fructose and glucose. Complex carbohydrates are the starches and celluloses.

As frugivores, we absorb monosaccharides without digestion. On the other

hand, we handle starches very poorly - almost not at all! We do not have the machinery for breaking down starch from natural sources for any significant amount.

If you had to eat rice as a raw grain, how much of the hard grain do you think you could easily gather from nature and chew in its hard-pebbled state? As a thoroughly tasteless starch, how much do you think you could handle? Enough to meet your nutrient needs? Even if ground, we can barely handle a tablespoonful raw. Likewise, we could hardly handle a tablespoonful of wheat flour raw. First, it is tasteless as are all polysaccharides. Secondly, starches are contained in cellulose-enclosed cells that are largely untouched by chewing, ensalivation and digestive enzymes. When we eat raw starches, we are not nourishing ourselves but are instead creating problems.

If we cook starches, they are dextrinized, become palatable, and usable for caloric purposes, but they take on new liabilities in the cooked state.

Humans are not fat eaters! While fats are the most concentrated sources of energy, our digestive tracts do not handle fats either quickly or efficiently. If we supplied all our calories with butter or some vegetable fat, how well do you think we'd fare? The Eskimos do it but are very short lived.

Humans are not protein eaters for, as previously cited, proteins require more energy for digestion than can be obtained from them whereas fruits are over 90% efficient.

But, speaking of efficiency, vegetables are at the bottom of the list. If we ate green leaves for food, we'd expend more energy in processing and handling them than we'd obtain. This is to say that we are not vegetarians, but are instead fruitarians. Vegetable eaters would technically be herbivores, the same as cattle, sheep, horses, goats and rabbits. We do not have four stomachs or the bacterial flora to make efficient use of vegetables, though we can obtain from expressed vegetable juices (by chewing) a plethora of nutrients. The caloric values of vegetables are in the form of cellulose granules.

When every food is weighed in the balance, only fruits meet our caloric needs ideally and amply.

Our Natural Foods Are Water SufficientHumans are among a class of creatures that have no natural water-drinking

equipment. This indicates that our diets should normally meet our water needs. Only fruits come naturally with all the water we require.

Our Natural Foods Must be Alkaline in Metabolic ReactionAll foods contain both acid and alkaline elements. Body balance

(homeostasis) in humans requires an alkaline pH for the metabolic end products. Hence, our food intake must also be predominantly alkaline.

Humans can readily excrete excesses of alkaline end- products but have great difficulty in handling acid end- products. Acid end-products must first be neutralized by alkaline minerals preparatory to excretion lest our eliminatory faculties be damaged, especially our kidneys.

Fruits are alkaline forming in every case. However, some nuts, which are technically fruits, are acid forming. Almost all protein foods predominate in acid-forming elements.

Only Fruits Meet All Our Needs IdeallyThus we have seen that when all factors and all foods are considered, only

fruits meet human needs adequately on every count.The way to paradise can come only if we begin the practices of paradise.We hope for paradise in vain as long as we continue to carry on those

practices which vitiate our being and thus society.As long as we consume animal flesh and products~as long as we attempt

to exploit others - as long as we are not loving, friendly and congenial with those among whom we live, then so long shall we contribute to the suffering and strife here on earth.

The first thing you can do is go on the paradise diet, a mostly fruitarian diet. That is a good start on the road to a paradise where planet earth will no longer have wars, hunger or disease.