Gabriel Cousins about fruit and fructose

[goodsamaritan]

Also, you mentioned the fear.. and? Oh I may have fear. Or is it simply that I just choose to be vegan, not out of fear but by simple choice? Why would buddhists or any other spiritual group not eat meat, would you say out of fear? Even if it is fear,so what then, why fear fear?

Does a paleo diet banish all fear?

Those people are not concerned with reproduction.  Those of us who are into reproduction need extra nutrition. 

I was never afraid to eat raw eggs and raw sea food.  Adding raw land animals took getting used to.  And yes, no fear of parasites.  I've read Hulda Clark and studied under Barefoot Herbalist MH.  Nothing to fear.  Be armed and informed.  I always have stocks of dewormers at home.

[TheSt0rm]

My Last reply: I dont take supplements. Only b12 and vitamin D. Maybe at the Tree of Life a lot of people have take supplements. I figure they were only recommendations and usually for people with diseases or deficiencies at the time. It's an institute for cleansing. But I assure you, you can do it with minimal supplements like seriously only b12 if you can deal with it and get enough sun for vitamin D. The other thing he mentions is DHA, but I dont know if he can believe that if we stay within the ratio of 4:1-1:1 omega 6-3 the body will provide for it enough DHA.

RawZi: Kidneys... hm I didn't know RAFD could really help the kidneys. I dont understand why a vegan diet couldn't help the kidneys, if the fats/proteins are raw, and one takes care not to have extra carbs/proteins it's supposed to be good for the kidneys. The animal fats thing: if one just takes care for the omega 3s shouldn't one be fine? And of course sprouting/soaking nuts seeds to get rid of lectins and converting less usable and/or crude forms of fats to more easily digestible fats. Raw fats are SO important, doesn't matter where you get it from. Cholesterol is supposed to be made in the body. If for some reason a person cannot make enough because of genetics (high dependence on external sources of cholesterol/saturatd fats?) then saturated fats are good for that. Saturated fats are harder to get on a plant based diet but there are options--and only if you eat high fat. The body also makes saturated fat. If one needs saturated fats (some people actually need them more than others) you've got coconuts, macadamias, brazil nuts etc (those last ones if eaten in larger quantity).

Goodsamaritan, not all religious/spiritual peoples are like that, not all are fearful of reproduction, even the vegans.

[TheSt0rm]

alright I finished editing my post.

[RawZi]

"Supplement ... Only b12"

    We're not all the same. No vegan that I know of in my family had a bad b12 or mma test. Meat is not a vitamin, it's a way of living.

"Supposed to be"

    I have experience. No amount of meat protein is too much for my kidneys. Small amounts of plant protein are bad for my kidneys. Any amount of cooked meat is not good for my kidneys. How old are you, two?

    How are your ratios for all the various lipids and types of cholesterol in your blood? My medical doctor gp says mine are "Awesome!" Mine have never been high or bad, but I am more than pleased with them now.  There's no reason to deprive yourself from food on a raw meat forum, if you were suffering from low cholesterol diseases and vegan for decades on good vegan foods.

    Fear. I still don't love the taste of meat. I do appreciate feeling well, calm, strong and healthy though etc. I react to foods very quickly, always felt something individual with each type of food. I can tell you I was really amazed with my first bite of raw fleshfood, it felt .. like the first real food I ever had, and long and ignorantly overdue. It took most of my fear of parasites away immediately.

    I don't live in Hawaii to be cracking macademias all day, and the coconuts here aren't the best. Coconut oil is highly allergenic to most of us on the forum and nuts are dangerous to eat too many of. Look at tol, they have to supplement and colonically irrigated to make up for it. There are a lot of people on earth, why argue? Herbivores are food. It's best for us and the earth to eat raw herbivores over other food. Gabriel is a doctor, and I respect doctors to be doctors, but what are you doing here St0rm?

    As for sex and your veganism and our raw meat diets, try it, you may not want to go back.  Almost any tribal culture we can find records prescribed extra animal food when trying to conceive. I have known many lifer vegans who craved meat while pregnant etc. Why do you keep chewing on this bone? It's done.

[jessica]

Also, you mentioned the fear.. and? Oh I may have fear. Or is it simply that I just choose to be vegan, not out of fear but by simple choice? Why would buddhists or any other spiritual group not eat meat, would you say out of fear? Even if it is fear,so what then, why fear fear?

Does a paleo diet banish all fear?

it is because they are afraid of animals and the having to controll the their true animal instincts....honestly at tree of life we grew garlic but it wasnt consumed because it lowered you down to your root chakra, your most primal chakra an didnt allow you to float around in the clouds and meditate all day...it brought you down to earth, the earth mother, but to spiritual leaders they choose to see only the fearful things we have to learn with our more conscious selves to control...survival, instinct, reproduction....thet "diet" like many eating disorders is a way to take control of one of the few things we do have control over in this life, what we put into our mouths, and often people use that when they know they cannot control the other aspect of their lives but feel the need for control in some portion.  it also really zonked people out to be so malnourished after years of dieting....honestly those guys were always up and down and fighting with some part of their diet and on a lot of supplements.  i agree green foods and moderate amounts of low glycemic vegetables and no grains and rarely eating fruit is a great way to feel healthy, but i think animal fats and proteins should be where the majority of the calorie and nutient intake should come from........

[Dorothy]

Hi Storm. I would like to welcome you here because you were probably attracted to this place for a good reason. Thanks for posting the video - I thought it quite interesting if not telling. I think at the end Cousens was a bit shocked about how good saturated fats could be for you - doesn't it seem that way? Didn't that make you wonder why he said saturated fats were bad? They aren't you know.

I was a vegetarian for a very long time (lots of it raw) and how I felt good was doing just what Cousens said to do - but then - he wasn't even around when I started - I just ate what made me feel the best out of what I thought was available to me. You could continue to eat how you are and keep ramping up your fats. It takes some work. Those nuts and seeds to be digestible for me need to be soaked, dehydrated and then made into butter or cream. The amount of food you will have to eat will be a good deal. It takes a lot of shopping and preparing, costs a lot of money and time, and takes planning.

But since you found your way here, why not give a try to what we have all found to be so useful and health-providing? Is there a reason that you would not want to add raw fish, eggs, dairy or meat to your diet? It really is so much simpler and more direct. I don't eat much meat like most of the folks here, but what I have added was important even if it was just to put my refrigerator, shopping, food production and eating times back into something more reasonable. Why jump through so many hoops to make a raw diet without raw animal foods work when adding some might be what makes you feel good and helps you? How will you know until you try it? That one egg yolk might just be the equivalent of 3 days of raw vegan fat producing work/eating and feed you on a level that might surprise you. Why restrict your options? We can support you in opening up you raw options and perhaps gaining even more than you suspected could be gained.

Oh - and that thing about cancer and fruit is not well-informed. There are all fruit cancer cures because many fruits have substances in them that kill cancer cells so just because cancer feeds off the fructose they take in more of the cancer-killing substances. Bananas so far in my research do not have any of those compounds. But like GS said - you can't clump all the fruits into one basket. If you ate nothing but raspberries I doubt if a tumor could survive. But then - your brain and nervous system wouldn't be all that happy - because they need the fat.

So, Storm, would you like to give it a try? It's really pretty easy to get started. Can you find some chickens that live free range so you could try eating a raw egg yolk? A tiny bit of salt, pop it in your mouth and you would be surprised and wonderful it can taste and feel.

[KD]

Cousens has a few pieces of the puzzle, 'sees more sections of the elephant' - as the new-agers like to say - than some. Unfortunately he is like many gurus in that for the average health seeker there is probably way too much info on which things are supposedly not working than real solutions which are actually doable or reflect much consideration to what has yielded health in the past.  Most things are spun through a lens glumped with a whole bunch of bias already accepting that vegetarianism is the way to go, and that veganism is also therefore doable with more meticulous harvesting and bottling of vitamins and minerals.

As with what Dorothy and I believe others are saying, if someone said they were doing his program temporarily, or did not mind putting a whole lot of fuss and ingenuity making a extremely low caloric diet fit their needs,  it would be less concerning to me than many other 'health' approaches. I bet smaller term stints on the diet - short of the indoctrination -  would do alot of the population good.

In recent interviews like in The Great Health Debate he comes across lately as having alot of humility and willingness to accept different points of view at times. I've read Conscious Eating and from a philosophy standpoint giving what he sees as as good reasons for accepting vegetarianism is the way to go, and alot of tips on the importance of bringing consciousness to ones food choices it succeeds.

Its possible that he himself has a certain level of health and vitality, spiritually and such that is perfectly sufficient without animal foods, but I suspect very few actually would have as much 'success' (which is not beyond criticism) and access to whatever those tools are that yield whichever results that might not in the end be as great as some folks even on standard diet from a casual or even scientific analysis.  Most decisions remain ideological over nutritional when it gets down to sat fats vs PUFAS or whatever so if one chooses his choices often the only way one could then argue doing so (or putting in a polluting algae plant or whatever) is through the philosophy/karma aspect.
 
When he starts talking about radio-isotopes in modern meat being a problem and such (possibly eating less meat than in nature..eek), my ears perk up a little, as with his analysis of fructose etc...Certainly no reason to dismiss everything he mentions based on philosophy, nor do i think anyone here disagrees.
 

[TheSt0rm]

interestingly I also read somewhere that replacing saturated fats with PUFAS seems heart healthy.
http://www.bidmc.org/YourHealth/HealthResearchJournals.aspx?ChunkID=487731

Im sure though that is just a generalization, as they haven't tested out all the variations of intakes of fats one can have. I think saturated fats can be healthy if raw. Even animal meat,but it's probably like comparing apples to oranges in terms of health effects. If you can do a raw vegan diet correctly it can be done. I just don't agree with how some people say that ALL PUFAS are bad (and veganism is bad, etc.) when all I've read about them are things about the omega 3/6 ratio, their relation to how unsoaked/unsprouted nuts contain lectins and such. Macronutrient ratios, lack of exercise, nutritional deficiencies based on the toxicity of an ignorant modern way of life and all the 'non-foods' in cooked vegan 'foods'. All of these factors can be modified to make an optimal fat intake from these plant foods if one could live in a community that supported this way of life, and the people in it all worked together to make it happen. Not much research has been done on raw food diets.

Even sprouting has been found to reduce lectins/antinutritional factors up to 100% depending on how long one sprouts,the nutrients given, etc. Sure some or in fact most people might still have sensitivities , but that's genetic. Our human ancestry was almost all omnivorous. It could take some work to make sure the next generation doesn't have these sensitivities if one works at it. I think sprouting is a God sent.

I forget to mention the Hippocrates Institute. My latest inspiration - all the people associated with the Hippocrates Institute. I now consider it essential to become a sproutarian. It does take work, but communities can live this way, self sustainably.

Robert Morse is another I've become recently interested in and he  shows how fruits are not all that bad. Its just when it is consumed in excess,and/or when it's taking place of other essential nutrients. It's a bit extreme. Though most of the fruitarians that are all about 100% fruit and nothing else it seems like they don't want to accept that humanity has evolved now to live in communities. We no longer have to live as nomads, living in seasons that fruit may not even be available at the times. We now have to learn to live self sustainably. I kind of see the same mindset in meat eaters and even raw meat eaters. Of course we may have a genetic predisposition but that doesn't mean it can't be worked around.

David Jubb is another leader in the raw food movement, and I'm very impressed in a lot of the things he says.

So I'm not saying raw meat eating is wrong. I'm sure one can live healthily. Though I simply choose to not want to kill animals to eat. I would only do so to survive if I can't do anything else. otherwise,if it's not necessary, why do it?

[jessica]

where do you get your greens from? are they local? are they from organic farms in california? if so they are contributing to the death of many animals, a lot of fish, birds, a lot of it due to the pesticides that are allowable by organic regulations, a lot of that produce is also mono cropped as well which further deteriorates habitat....just sayin, you aint goin to win unless you are growing it yourself, etc...even the extra energy it takes to run your dehydrator, it is all a translation of energy, the death of a chicken to feed a family...etc...
i choose meat because it is the easiest to process, i can get it from local people who use their livestock to improve grasslands, who have little homesteads or farms where the poo goes back into the soil and nourishes the the veggies i buy off of them, knowing that the money i give them goes back into making a healthy environment for more happy animals to live a good life, and that my consumption of the flesh and energy from the animal goes back into the same
there is no coconut fad grave yard filled with fermaldahyde ridden shells behind my house(re tree of life)
i agree that sprouting and greens are amazingly nutritious and healthful, i think its wise to take the responsibility to do it yourself....you can grow seeds, you can eat whole foods like winter squash and eat those seeds, you can grow greens year round help wild greens(ie weeds) grow and flourish...no ego or obsession or religion tied to it, just the basic connection that you are a part of the natural cycle

[Dorothy]

Ah Storm, it seems like you are in the wrong place. You have no plans on eating raw animal foods or even a vaguely healthy varied vegan diet. You sound like a fundamentalist ethical vegan looking to try to convince people here that eating nothing but sprouts would be good for them. That's not going to happen. Sprouts can be nice, but nothing but sprouts won't even come close to what even Cousens is talking about above. I have and do sprout to add to my greens but would never consider living on only sprouts. Living so out of touch with nature and yourself as to force yourself to eat nothing but sprouts because of an idea is so out of balance that it's almost inconceivable. There is a wide array of raw foods to choose from and many people have and are telling you here that eating raw animal foods transformed them for the better and healed their weaknesses and sicknessses. Being tunnel-visioned usually does not end up in healthy living. I wish you luck on your sproutarian diet and creating a whole community of such an unsustainable lifestyle and hope you don't get sick, but if and when you do get sick, come back and maybe we will be able to help you. What you are talking about is the furthest thing possible from a paleo diet imaginable.

[TheSt0rm]

I never said only sprouts.

Sproutarian is a word I just recently started using because sprouting is a lifestyle. To have multiple ongoing trays/bags of sprouts to have and eat everyday.

Ok, maybe sproutarian isn't a good word. It's just a word I picked up.

Though I still consider sprouts to be very important.

[cherimoya_kid]

Ah Storm, it seems like you are in the wrong place. You have no plans on eating raw animal foods or even a vaguely healthy varied vegan diet. You sound like a fundamentalist ethical vegan looking to try to convince people here that eating nothing but sprouts would be good for them. That's not going to happen. Sprouts can be nice, but nothing but sprouts won't even come close to what even Cousens is talking about above. I have and do sprout to add to my greens but would never consider living on only sprouts. Living so out of touch with nature and yourself as to force yourself to eat nothing but sprouts because of an idea is so out of balance that it's almost inconceivable. There is a wide array of raw foods to choose from and many people have and are telling you here that eating raw animal foods transformed them for the better and healed their weaknesses and sicknessses. Being tunnel-visioned usually does not end up in healthy living. I wish you luck on your sproutarian diet and creating a whole community of such an unsustainable lifestyle and hope you don't get sick, but if and when you do get sick, come back and maybe we will be able to help you. What you are talking about is the furthest thing possible from a paleo diet imaginable.

I couldn't have said it better. Well done.

[cherimoya_kid]

I never said only sprouts.

Sproutarian is a word I just recently started using because sprouting is a lifestyle. To have multiple ongoing trays/bags of sprouts to have and eat everyday.

Ok, maybe sproutarian isn't a good word. It's just a word I picked up.

Though I still consider sprouts to be very important.

You don't have the guts of an herbivore like a cow or gorilla to be able to pull off a diet very high in sprouts.  No human does.  Sprouts are not to be eaten in large amounts. They produce a very quick taste change, even when you're very hungry.   That taste change is your body saying "no thanks, this food is not what I need."

Get a clue, man.

Seriously, I think I might just ban you.  You're like a lot of us were, about 4-8 years in the past.  W e had to learn the HARD way, (some harder than others, ROFL), and I feel like you probably will too.  So why not go away from this forum, learn through experience, and then come back in 5 or 10 years?  Certainly you refuse to take advantage of our collected knowledge from years of dietary experimentation, so why not just create your own knowledge-through-experimenting?

Surely you realize that most of us long-timers have WAY more experience than you, and that convincing us to go BACK to veganism is a losing proposition.  It'd be like trying to convince us that we were wrong, Santa Claus IS real. It's not happening.

[RawZi]

    St0rm I have been sproutarian. It was amazing. I had energy, flexibility etc. It pissed the oncologist/hematologist off big time! It did not make me completely well. I did not feel completely well.  It also brought new health discomforts. It served a great purpose though. Best to you on this step, sproutarian or not.

[Dorothy]

Zi, how long were you a sproutarian for? Sounds like you were really sick before trying it. What diet did you come from when you went sproutarian? My body wouldn't go for it. Whenever I try to eat 100% of any one food for any length of time my body balks.

[RawZi]

    I came from whole cooked food no extras vegan Dorothy most of the transitions. I never did sproutarian more than a year at a time. I probably ate about five percent (fresh) fruit, so I don't mean 100% sprout. Not real sweet fruit, but yes very ripe. In recipes of blended five to seven inch 'sprouts'. Yes, I was majorly sick and falling down a steep hill fast if I wasn't actively very careful in timing and environment of every little step of every recipe.

[TheSt0rm]

I realize this forum is not what I suspected. The paleo diet does not include a vegan approach. So I'm leaving for good. I still believe in an all raw vegan approach, though I don't discredit the use of animal products as being helpful for some. Sometimes it might be what the body needs for healing, etc. I just don't see it as a long term thing.

I may just be on another level. Just because it's rare to see a raw vegan who practices a good diet does not mean it's not possible. There are many ways/approaches to raw veganism, obviously other than what's popular.

Regards

[Dorothy]

Storm, I wish you the best. I did a healthy vegan diet for a very long time and was very healthy, but this is a group of people that explores all aspects of traditional paleo diets - of which there have been no vegan cultures up to this point, so it's not the kind of place where you can come and ask people why eat meat if not necessary. The answer is, why NOT eat raw animal foods if they help and heal, make everything easy and are more in balance with nature and sustainable and better for our mother earth? Raw animal foods is much more than just mammal meats btw. Even if I go back to a 100% raw vegan diet one day because I feel it is what is best for me or it is a time where I can and want to jump through the hoops I have to on such a diet, I will feel that I learned a tremendous amount here if I ever end up in a different situation and especially  for my loved ones. There are very few people that can do what is necessary to stay healthy long-term on a raw vegan diet and what I have noticed is that many disregard obvious negatives that they are experiencing calling it detox or the like.

Please, if you get too thin or weak or get negative symptomology  don't try to talk yourself into a diet that might not work for you because of an idea. You are doing a big experiment with yourself. It is not a better way - just different. There is a condescension that comes from many raw vegans regarding ethics and superiority that I have found to be not only distasteful, but wholly unfounded. Buying into that could do harm, especially over time if you or your circumstances change. The ancient cultures that ate raw paleo were not inferior in any way. Their ways can be learned from. You will not know how you might feel if you have never tried it, so you cannot judge it. Keep this in mind years or decades from now just in case. You have options.

[RawZi]

    Be well TheSt0rm! 

    Sorry we weren't a good fit or vice versa.  Like D said, we've been not only doing raw paleo, but also another end of the spectrum of raw diet forums, so vegan is not on the menu here.  Maybe that will change, it's up to the moderators/long timers and what's best for the forum to grow and present a raw paleo approach.  And I'm sure paleo people still raw did not eat their whole diet vegan and the bulk of it sprouts.  It would have taken all day every day and birds and slugs and rodents and perhaps iguanas would have gotten into their non-windows and eaten their plantings.

    I did raw sproutarian and vegan no animals consistently over decades.  The human body, or many human bodies cannot convert some of the sprout based nutrients no matter how well prepared to eat it.  Life can be longer and more importantly more calm and strengthening without forcing things.  In time maybe you will see this, maybe you won't.  Hope to see you back if you do.  Nice meeting you (in this thread).

[balancing-act]

I was 95% raw vegan for a couple years. I always ate some animal products on the side (cooked, as raw animal wasn't in my lexicon at the time), because I sensed I needed them. But, as for the raw veganism, I went back and forth between the Cousens thing of eating lots of nuts and vegetables and a little bit of low-glycemic fruit- and the high-fruit style. I gotta say, I liked the fruit better. At least fruit is delicious. I still eat tons of fruit, but I don't eat tons of nuts or (any) salad. I sort of had to force myself to dip broccoli in almond butter and pretend it was enjoyable. I ended up eating a ton of avocados. Now I can't look at a friggin avocado.
So I went from low-fruit raw vegan to straight fruitarian back to low-sweet raw vegan then to finally having an epiphany that I needed to eat animal products and *instant and overwhelming benefit* as soon as I started to just eat unpasteurized cheese. I didn't eat any fruit for a month or two at that point, and lived off cooked meat stews and raw cheese, pretty much... but I started to feel really heavy. Then over the summer I found fruit again, and started balancing lots of fruit with cooked animal products. It wasn't until I found this forum that I woke up to realizing I could and should eat meat raw. I just started, but I'm committed to it.
Anyway, the upshot is that I found the Gabriel Cousens diet particularly unenlightened, personally. I think a high-fruit diet can be good as a cleansing thing for a short period, but, at least for me, the vegetables-and-nuts thing was the worst of the whole bunch. 
I do feel so fortunate to be able to have tried all these diets and now to to have the knowledge (not to mention $) to have a tray full of persimmons, a giant jackfruit, and lots of raw ground beef and veal steak and butter in my kitchen at the moment which I'm looking forward to devouring!
Now... how to tell the world? 

[Dorothy]

    I came from whole cooked food no extras vegan Dorothy most of the transitions. I never did sproutarian more than a year at a time. I probably ate about five percent (fresh) fruit, so I don't mean 100% sprout. Not real sweet fruit, but yes very ripe. In recipes of blended five to seven inch 'sprouts'. Yes, I was majorly sick and falling down a steep hill fast if I wasn't actively very careful in timing and environment of every little step of every recipe.

Did you eat fats Zi? Eating all those sprouts sounds like torture to me. You could do that a whole year at a time?! You must have had a very strong constitution.

[Dorothy]

Balancing-act - shhhhhhhh. Don't tell the world or there won't be enough and I'll have to start eating bugs! 

[RawZi]

Did you eat fats Zi? Eating all those sprouts sounds like torture to me. You could do that a whole year at a time?! You must have had a very strong constitution.

    As Sproutarian I ate sprouts of various stages of development, I prepared them in various ways as well, and it was grain sprouts, legume sprouts, nut sprouts, oilseed sprouts and and and some seaweed.  Maybe I have a very strong constitution, maybe you're right.  People have looked in my eyes and told me I have many decades to go in this life, and I mean when I was sick, and I always believed they were right.  I did suspect I may die a number of times especially a number of years ago, but overall I knew I HAD to live, doesn't matter what I want, but what should be. I'm sure there are some others who were Sproutarian longer, Viktoras etc.  Everything has good and bad.  There was lots of energy, pretty nice energy.  I don't know if it's my constitution is strong, or rather the way my body deals with things helps me live longer.

    The nut and seed sprouts the way I prepared them got free form fatty acids, so there's the fats.

[Dorothy]

Ah - soaked/sprouted nuts and seeds for me are still good sources of fat. Thanks for the explanation. Did you eat vegetables though - or just the 5% fruit. All those sprouts (even though of such a wide variety) still seems monochromatic and limited. Did you get bored?

What was your first movement away from that diet? How did you try eating raw animal foods at first? That must have been a big jump and you did it a long time ago when before there was a forum or a place to get support or learn about it.

[RawZi]

    Yes, a timy bit, not every day.  Broccoli, cauliflower, celery, mushrooms, beets, scallion, cabbage, lettuce everything organic.  Wasn't bored at all of the food, I was feeling better than ever before in many ways, so I think that made up for "lack of variety".

    Lack of support and such was my first movement away. 

    My first raw animal food I put in my mouth was butter.  About to do that and knowing it was only my first step to raw meat I felt like I was jumping off one of the highest cliffs to a bottomless pit with only faith in the healthier attributes to the diet.