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May 22, 2010

Health: Fruit & Diet ► The Energy In Fruits

The contents of fruit
As the interest in nutrition increases and people are getting more and more conscious about what they eat, the interest in fruit and its contents also grows. But we still don't know that much about fruit and there is much to discover about the substances that fruit contains. We know it is healthy for us, and that people who are sick can be cured by a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Even cancer can sometimes be cured by this diet but which substances fruit contains is a mystery. That a human being can live healthily on fruit alone has been proven by the fruitarians, they only consume fruit.

On this page we treat the following subjects:

-Water in fruit;
-The burning process & sugar in fruit;
-Proteins.

Water in fruit
Planet earth is covered with water for 70%. The human body consists of 80% of water. So what should humans eat: food that contains 80% water.
If you think about it, it is very logical to have food that contains much water. Al right, you say, then I just drink 8 to 12 glasses of water each day, so I can have as much food that doesn't contain much water as I want. Bad luck, this won't work. You cannot cleanse your body by flooding it with water. Instead of drowning your body, you only have to eat food that is rich in water: fruit, fruit juices and vegetables are the nutrition that fit this definition.

Why is it better to consume food that has lots of water in it?
All the fixed substances that you consume have to be digested. A steak for instance can take 8-10 hours to digest, while a fruit salad only takes about 30 minutes! If you squeeze the fruit salad and drink the juice, your body can integrate the nutritious elements even faster. In this way your body can use its energy for other purposes than digesting. For example thinking or detoxifying.

Let's take a closer look at how our body extracts energy from food.

  1. The burning process & sugar in fruit
Everything you eat or drink has to be digested to extract the energy from it.
Your body can extract energy from food in two ways:
  • Burning with oxygen, for sugar and fat (fruit);
  • Burning without oxygen, for proteins (meat/dairy).
- Burning with oxygen,for sugar and fat (fruit)

The energy fruit contains is in the form of sugars (glucose). Your body can easily turn this glucose into energy by using oxygen. When the body burns the sugars with the help of oxygen there are waste products produced.
The waste products of this chemical reaction are water and carbon-dioxide. Your body can use the water and disposes of the carbon-dioxide through the lungs by breathing.
It is a very quick, clean and easy way to extract energy.

Your body does an excellent job: it extracts 50% of the energy. A combustion engine about 10 to 20%, the rest is lost through heat.

Fruit juice takes only about 15 minutes and raw fruit about 30 minutes to digest!

- Burning without oxygen, for proteins (meat/dairy)
Proteins are burnt in a different way. The energy that for instance meat, milk and dairy contain consists of proteins and animal fat. The largest part consists of proteins and the conversion of proteins into energy is more difficult and costs more energy than the conversion of sugar and fat into energy.

When the body burns proteins other waste products are produced than with the burning of sugars. The waste product of the burning-process without oxygen is ammonia which is connected with carbon-dioxide and forms the less toxic ureum which is excreted by the kidneys. It's a more cumbersome way to extract energy.

A steak can take up to 8 or 10 hours to digest, especially when eaten in combination with potatoes. In comparison to fruit (30 minutes) a lot of energy is lost to the digestion of proteins and this means that you can't use that energy for other things. Thinking or the disposing of toxins for example.

Proteins
When it comes to fruit and vegetables people tend to say: "But what about my proteins? I need them." We all know that we need proteins, because proteins are an important building material for our cells. We also know that meat, dairy and eggs contain many proteins, so we say that we have to eat meat, dairy and eggs to stay healthy.
We have three arguments that prove that the human body doesn't need that much proteins:

-The fruitarians;
-Babies;
-Amino acids.

- The fruitarians
The vegetarians (no meat), vegans (no animal products) and fruitarians (only fruit) do not consume food that contain many proteins. They live a healthy life without big doses of proteins and look younger too!
Proteins are important though and the best source of protein is from the same raw fruits and vegetables that provide all the other nutrients: vitamins, minerals, enzymes and carbohydrates. Although fruit and vegetables contain less proteins than other nutrition, about 15 to 20 times less than for instance meat, the best way to get all these nutrients, including protein, is to eat a well-balanced variety of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables.
For the exact amount of proteins in fruit see: contents of fruit.

- Babies
When a baby is lucky enough to receive the most natural food it can get babies will be breast fed for the first three to twelve months of their lives. Mother milk contains not only the necessary nutritional elements but also protects the child against allergies and infections. It consists only of about 1% of proteins though proteins are the most important material for building cells! Babies grow lots of cells so obviously it's not necessary to obtain much of proteins for the cell-building process. Fruit also only consists of 1% of proteins and that is obviously enough proteins for a human to obtain the amino acids required for building the cells. Fruit doesn't contain much proteins but has everything in it to make fully grown humans and babies grow.

- Amino-acids
Proteins consist of amino acids and our body uses 20 different amino-acids. There are 8 amino-acids that our body cannot produce itself. They are called the essential amino-acids and our bodies have to obtain them through nutrition. There are many fruits and vegetables that contain all of the eight essential amino acids in the single fruit or veg. This means that it's not necessary to consume animal products to obtain the proteins that contain the essential amino acids our body needs. The following fruits and vegetables contain all 8 essential amino acids:
-Fruits: Bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers.
-Vegetables: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots (also good for the memory), corn, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, okra, peas, summer squash and kale.

Inform yourself about what you consume and read the labels in the supermarket to discover what it all contains.


Health: Fruit & Diet ► Fruits & Detoxification (Con #2)

Detoxification
Before we tell you more about the detoxification of your body with fruit we talk about stimulants first. Then we discuss detoxification and the slow reaction of your body, it reacts like an oil tanker.

Stimulating your body
A stimulant is a substance that quickly changes a symptom in an unnatural way. Many people in Western society live on stimulation. We use stimulation to make us feel good. If you try to control a symptom with stimulants, the cause of that symptom will remain. The core of a problem will never be solved by using stimulants. The number of stimulants we use is endless.
We will discuss the most important stimulants in a quick overview.

List of most common stimulants

Refined white sugar
A lot has been written about the detrimental effects of refined white sugar on the body. It is really very bad for you. Inform yourself because a lot of products contain a lot of refined white sugar. Cola for instance, but also ketchup contains a lot. Try to cut down on it by using brown sugars, like cane sugar.
Sugar has a stimulating effect. If you consume a product full of sugar you get a kick out of it, that's why products that contain a lot of sugar are so attractive.

Possible substitutes:
- cane sugar; tastes the same, same kick.
- fruit juices; same kick from natural sugars.

Coffee
The stimulating effect of caffeine in cola, coffee, tea, and chocolate are well known.
Substitute for cola: for the caffeine green tea; for the sugar it contains (one 0.2 l. glass contains 3 spoons full of refined sugar) you can drink fruit juices.

Substitute for coffee:
- Japanese or Chinese green tea.

Gives the same kick because it contains the caffeine but is less worse because it does not contain the stomach irritating substances.

Diet pills
The stimulation of some diet pills is obvious. A lot of weight loss herbs are stimulatory. Some athletes have even experimented with these to give them more energy during their competitions. How's that for a stimulant?
You should be very careful or better: do not use them at all. If it is really necessary consult your doctor first.
Substitute: Fruit.

Fruit is detoxifying and you can eat as much of it as you want. You will lose a lot of weight if you cut down on other nutrition and replace them by fruit.

Cigarettes
The nicotine in cigarettes is another well know stimulant.
Substitute:
- squeeze fruit (kills time);
- carrots.

Spices
Some people feel that salt, pepper, and some spices can be stimulating. Did you ever notice that some people seem to require large amounts and others require none?
Substitute:
- herbal salt.

Red Meat
People feel good and strong right after the consumption of red meat. This is a bit strange because the energy of meat consists of proteins and they take 4 - 6 hours to digest. Therefore the immediate effect must be a stimulant.This effect can be caused by the stimulating elements the meat contains. A well known theory is that when animals are being killed, the animals know that it's about to happen. This activates the production of adrenaline which fuels their blood with fear hormones. These are incredibly stimulating and it is impossible to remove all of them from the meat (and milk).
Animals are also injected with hormones that can stimulate too.
Substitute:
- fish.

Drugs
Soft-drugs as hashish and pot stimulate the kidneys and the blood circulation and can't be overdosed but also contain a lot of polluting elements that can cause cancer, like cigarettes. So stay away from them.
Hard drugs are chemical drugs and are extremely stimulative (pills, powders, alcohol). They speak for themselves, the biggest kick, the biggest kick down for health. These stimulants are so aggressive they kill brain cells. An overdose is killing.


Detoxification

Stimulants cannot give the body what it needs. Only natural food can promote a healthy and thus happy physiological function. You could look at it this way: the only natural way to feel good is the one that is a by-product of a normally functioning body that is producing sufficient energy at the cellular level. Any other way to feel good is phony and a result of stimulants, how innocent these stimulants may look.
Your body detoxifies itself all day and for the biggest part during your sleep. Especially until noon it is therefore sensible to eat fruit only. Your body has to dispose of the toxic elements it receives from stimulants, nutrition and pollution.

If you stop the stimulating of your body with a certain stimulant there is a good chance that the following is the result:

an immediate loss of energy;
emotional symptoms such as headaches, sickness and depressions.

So, if you stop the use of a stimulant you will not feel better right away. It's obvious that these products are really addictive. In some cases if someone improves his eating habits an immediate increase of energy is experienced but the opposite is just as often the result. The body has not only to deal with the moment but also with the problems that have resulted from the past...

Weight loss
For example: if someone improves his eating habits (for example eating a lot of fruit or quitting on dairy products) and loses weight, not only does the body have to burn the fat, it also has to cope with toxic waste that is embedded within the fat. So if your body is burning that fat it is very likely that you will feel ill because your body also burns the toxic waste products embedded within that fat.

Fruit
If you haven't eaten fruit and vegetables on a regular basis and you start to eat a lot of fruit, your body will detoxify itself first. Even if you don't change your use of stimulants!
Fruit can be used to help your body detoxify. The best way of doing this is not to eat anything but fruit until noon. Till that time your body is still busy detoxifying from the night before. Now you know why people always drink freshly squeezed orange- or grapefruit juice in the morning.

The strongest detoxifying effect is caused by the acid fruits. Especially (red) grapefruit and lemons are detoxifying. Citrus fruit is all acid fruit but also tomatoes and pineapples are acid fruits . Squeeze 3 oranges, two mandarins and half a red grapefruit for breakfast. It's the quickest energy supply to wake you up in the morning!
Be a little-bit careful with the acid fruits when you are ill. Your body is already very busy detoxifying and when stimulating this process it could cause an over-reaction of your body to clean itself even more and could make you even feel worse for that moment. So don't go squeezing 20 oranges to get better.

If you are really sick and don't want to eat or drink, the best drink is a glass with the juice of half a lemon filled up with boiled water and a bit of cane sugar (not refined white sugar!) Because you only use half a lemon the detoxifying effect is not so strong but your body does receive much vitamin C.

Oil-tanker
Don't forget that the human body reacts like an oil-tanker. It is wise not to expect immediate results from changing your eating patterns. Going on a diet is nice for a two weeks holiday at Hawaii beach but won't help you losing weight or make you feel better, healthier and more energetic on the long run.

Just have fun & five pieces of fruit a day.

Health: Fruit & Diet ► Wrong Nutrition List (Con #2)

Wrong Nutrition List

If you have realized a consumption of five fruits a day you are ready to take the next step by consuming even more of the 'right nutrition'. To help you with this we have put together a 'right nutrition' list and a 'wrong nutrition' list. You can print the lists and put them on your kitchen wall. Every time you eat something check if it is included in the 'right nutrition' list or the 'wrong nutrition' list. If it is from the 'wrong nutrition' list try to replace it by something from the right list. If you can't replace the 'wrong nutrition' for some kind of reason enjoy it and don’t feel guilty about it!

Wrong food categories
  1. Animal food;
  2. White flour;
  3. Refined Sugar;
  4. Stimulants;

1. ANIMAL FOOD

Animal foods are: meat, milk, yoghurt, cheese, bouillon, butter, fish, shellfish, eggs e.g.
If you look into it you'll be amazed how much products in the supermarket contain some kind of animal based product. If you want to become a strict vegan it is not easy. The food pattern of the Western civilisation is based on animal products. In fact this is very strange since we know that many modern diseases are caused by an overconsumption of animal food.

If you want to lose weight quickly it is a must to stay away from animal products. There are two reasons why you have to abstain from animal food if you want to slim down fast:

The energy animal foods contain consists of proteins. Proteins take a longer time to digest and are burnt in a different, more cumbersome way than fruits and vegetables. Burning proteins is a body polluting process so it will not contribute to a healthy functioning of the cells. For more about this subject see the burning process.
Animal products contain a lot of fattening cholesterol whereas fruits and vegetables do not contain any cholesterol.

2. WHITE FLOUR

White flour forms a sticky substance in the intestines and cardiovascular vessels, causes constipation and deregulates the digestive system. For a proper burning process you have to stay away as much as you can from white flour.
Products that contain white flour are: white bread, pizza, buns, pancakes, crepes e.g.


3. REFINED WHITE SUGAR

Refined white sugar is a stimulant and therefore mentioned at 4 but we treat white sugar here because allmost every product you buy at the store contains some kind of refined white sugar. Check those labels! If you consume refined white sugar your body will start craving for more. This effect is not known with the consumption of natural sugars. Try to avoid products that contain this worldly accepted stimulant. Examples: sodas, icecream, candy, ketchup, other sauces and literally thousands of other products in the supermarket. Inform yourself and check the labels.


4. STIMULANTS

Characteristic for stimulants is that they can quickly change a mental or bodily state but that the change is never made permanently and is only a temporary solution. We use stimulants to make us feel good. If you try to control a symptom with stimulants, the cause of that symptom will remain. So try to stay away from stimulants as much as you can. The most well known stimulants are:
Refined white sugar;
  • Coffee,
  • Alcohol;
  • Cigarettes;
  • Spices;
  • Red meat;
  • Diet pills;
  • Drugs.
Just have fun & five pieces of fruit a day.

Health: Fruit & Diet ► Right Nutrition List (Con #1)

Right Nutrition List
In other words: to lose weight it is important to live a healthier life, a healthy life starts with healthy food and raw fruits and vegetables are the healthiest food. We recommend you start your weight loss program by having five fruits a day and focusing on feeling good.

Good food categories
  • Fruits and olive oil;
  • Raw Vegetables / Cooked Vegetables;
  • Grains and Pasta;
  • Nuts & Seeds;
  • Unrefined sugars (often brown).

1. FRUITS & OLIVE OIL

- Acid Fruit
oranges - pineapples - sour apples - sour plums - lemons - grapefruits - sour peaches - limes - tangerines - sour grapes - tomatoes

These are the most detoxifying fruits and excellent foods. They should be avoided when you have the flu because the body could overreact detoxifying and make you even more sick.

Some people may have problems with these fruits because of their acid content. The acid though is a healthy and organic nutritional element (for instance: ascorbic acid is vitamin c, found especially in citrus fruits and vegetables).

Sometimes one type of fruit from this category can irritate a particular part of the body. This can be caused by an allergic reaction caused by cow milk. There is a good chance that after staying away from dairy this reaction disappears.

- Low-acid Fruit
apricots - blueberries - huckleberries - strawberries - nectarines - raspberries - blackberries - gooseberries - mangos - elderberries - olives - fresh figs - sweet apples - cherries- sweet peaches - sweet plums - persimmons

These fruits are less detoxifying than acid fruits and can be handled well in any amount.

- Sweet Fruit
dates - sweet grapes - pears - prunes - raisins - dried figs

Rehydrate dried fruit by soaking it overnight in a jar of water.

- Melons
watermelons - cantaloupes - honey dew - galia

Are like all other fruits excellent food. What's very special about watermelons is that they contain as much iron as spinach. Eat as much of them as you like.

- Starchy Fruit
bananas - peanuts - pumpkins - winter squashes

Don't eat more than one banana a day if you gain weight easily.

- Non-starchy Fruit
cucumber - sweet pepper - zucchini - egg plant - yellow squash

- Protein containing Fruit
olives - avocadoes

Extremely healthy fruits. Olives and avocadoes contain a lot of different nutritious elements and even scientists don't know what they exactly contain!

Olives
Small bitter oval fruit, green when unripe and black when ripe, used for food and for oil.

Olive oil
Olive oil is a fruit-juice. Olive oil is cold pressed olive juice and olives are a fruit. That’s why it's so healthy and is used in the finest cuisines all over the world. Cold pressed means that the olives are picked and squeezed and are not boiled before squeezing.

Sorts
There are three types of olive oil:

  • Extra vierge: the purest oil with an excellent taste and a low acidic level;
  • Vierge: oil with a very good taste and a higher acidic level;
  • Normal olive oil: this consists of a mix of refined olive oil and an oil between extra vierge and vierge olive oil, it has a good to normal taste.

Wine
You can compare olive oil with wine. Its quality and taste is influenced by geographical factors such as land or region. You also have good and bad olive years, depending on the weather during a certain season. The quality depends of the good care of growers and producers. There are oils with a strong and with a mild taste, some are spicy and others have a grass taste or taste a bit like nuts. No olive oil is the same.
There is yellow and green olive oil. The color says something about the time of season the olives are harvested and not about the quality.

The benefits of olives and olive-oil

  • In the mediterranean countries of Europe people eat a lot of olive oil. It is common to eat bread or toast just dipped in olive oil. Because of the daily use of olive oil the people that live in these countries suffer less from heart diseases than people of other countries in Europe.
  • The use of olive oil has a positive effect on the cholesterol level in our blood.
  • Because olives grow in a warm environment and the fruit has to protect itself from heat and bright sunshine, olives contain a lot of fenol-like substances. These substances could possibly play a role in the prevention and cure of thrombosis and arteriosclerosis.
  • It is often said that olive oil causes problems with the stomach or intestines. This is simply not the case. Olive oil is very easy to digest and mild for the intestines!

Test it yourself
You can do a little test. If you spill some olive oil on your hands you can easily wash it off. It disappears fast in the sink and you don't need a lot of hot water and detergent to wash it away. Because your body is like a glass of water it reacts the same.
If you have eaten some olive oil your body will evaporate it within 1½ hour via your pores. This means your body can handle it easily and does not have to waste any energy to digest it. This works differently with baking butter and other products, especially those based on animal products. In this case you have to scrub hard and need hot water and detergent to dissolve the fat in the water so it can be washed away.

Use more olive oil
Oil and butter based on vegetables are to be preferred but olive oil is best of course and you can fry everything in it. To put it shortly: everything you eat should be based on fruit or vegetables. You will look and feel much healthier and younger too!


- Olive oil
Olive oil is very healthy. Use olive oil from today on instead of animal based fat. If you don't want to use olive oil use a different plant based oil. If you still want to use butter use real butter and not margarine. olives and olive oil

2. VEGETABLES

After fruit the most important of all foods. Along with fruits, vegetables are the only right nutrition for the human body. Vegetables contain amino acids and antioxidants in forms that do not occur in other foods. You can eat unlimited amounts. Vegetables are most nutritious when eaten raw. They are especially important to eat for their protein contents. We don't offer more information about vegetables because this is a fruit site.
For more information on fruits vegetables click here.

- Non-Starchy (usually green) Vegetables
alfalfa sprouts - asparagus - bamboo sprouts - beet greens - broccoli - cabbage - celery chard - Brussels sprouts - chive - collards - dandelion greens - endive - garlic - green beans - kale - leeks - lettuce - mustard greens - okra - onions - parsley - radishes - rhubarb - scallions - spinach - wax beans - turnips - watercress - turnip greens

- Mildly Starchy Vegetables
carrots - green peas - rutabagas - cauliflower - beets

- Starchy Vegetables
corn - dried beans - artichokes - potatoes

- Protein containing Vegetables
dried beans - dried peas - soybeans - lentils

3. GRAINS

Grains consist of equal amounts of starch and protein.
pasta - organic whole wheat - brown rice - spelt - millet - oats - rye - barley

4. NUTS & SEEDS

Nuts and seeds are a good source of protein. Nuts are always best when eaten raw right out of their shell. Nuts are an excellent source of rare amino acids that are destroyed in cooked protein. Seeds are a good source of essential minerals and beneficial oils. As with nuts, do not overeat.

- Nuts
almonds - Brazil nuts - pecans - filberts

- Seeds
sesame - pumpkin - sunflower

6. NATURAL, UNREFINED SUGARS

It is very important to use natural, unrefined, often brown sugars instead of white sugars or sweetners. To digest refined white sugar your body has to use a lot of energy and it works as a stimulant. Sweetners make you crave for sugar about 30 minutes after consumption so you end up robbing the cookie jar. Unrefined brown sugars are natural and provide you with energy.

brown sugar - cane sugar


Just have fun & five pieces of fruit a day.

Health: Fruit & Diet ► Healthy Weight Loss

Healthy weight loss
Maybe it sounds too good to be true but all you have to do to reach your ideal weight is eat as much fruit as you can every day! If you don't believe it or just want to know more you definitely have to read further but you might want to calculate your ideal weight first.
-ideal weight calculator-

Lose the weight with fruit
First we think it's best to focus on feeling good. Secondly to remind that in order to live a healthy and energetic life in a body that is fit to do that job, attempting to lose weight only will not be the key. There are some other changes you might want to bring into your life. In order to have the cells of your body function properly they have to receive the right nutritious elements and toxins must be kept away from them as much as possible and should be disposed of properly. In order to reach that goal we have the following recommendations for you:
1) Consume as much as you can of the 'right nutrition';
2) Avoid as much as you can of the 'wrong nutrition';
3) Exercise moderately;
4) Be happy with every small change you've been able to make permanently;
5) Don't make weight loss more complicated as it is.

1) Consume as much as you can of the 'right nutrition'
After many research a great deal of scientists agree that:
raw fruits and (cooked) vegetables are the only right nutrition for human beings.
If you want to succeed in living a truly healthy life the best thing to do is to consume as much of the 'right nutrition' as possible each day. The more raw fruits and (cooked) vegetables you eat, the more your appetite for them increases and you might end up feeding your body with nothing but the right nutrition!

If you don't consume five pieces of fresh fruit a day yet (raw or squeezed) and you want to lose some weight permanently in a period of, say, six weeks (this period depends on your current eating pattern) the best thing to do is eat (or squeeze) those five fruits every day. If you haven’t consumed that much healthy food for a long time, it is most likely that your body starts to detoxify. You could even get sick!


2) Avoid as much as you can of the 'wrong nutrition';
If you want to lose weight quickly just eating or squeezing five pieces of fresh fruit a day will not be enough. We have put together a list of foods to avoid if you want to speed up the burning process. In this way you'll start burning fat faster. You'll have to avoid as much food from the 'wrong nutrition' list as you can. In fact it’s a simple list to remember, only two food groups are mentioned: stimulants and animal food. Now this list might seem simple enough but it is actually quite difficult to find out which products in the supermarket do or don't contain one of the products mentioned on the list. If you check out the labels you'll notice that almost every product contains a stimulant, mostly white refined sugar or some kind of animal based product, often stock.

So, the foods you have to stay away from as much as possible if you want to help your body function properly and thus lose the excess weight are stimulants and animal based food.


3) Exercise moderately
Just a bit of exercise will do. It is important though to get some exercise every day especially if you are in a job where you sit down all day. A half-an-hour walk a day will do. Of course more exercise is always better but never feel bad if you can't get yourself to do it. If you just take that walk for at least half an hour each day you'll be fine. Stretching your muscles is also good, it makes you more conscious of your body.


4) Be happy with every small change you've been able to make permanently.
Your body reacts like an oil tanker so if you want to change course it will take some time. Every structural change in the right direction is one to be proud of as long as it is permanent. After making a change it will take about six weeks before a change becomes permanent and part of your daily life.


Be smart
If you want to be slim you have to be smart: change your eating pattern permanently. In this way you'll lose those pounds forever! Remember this: after eating (five to) nine pieces of fruit a day for a few months you'll notice that your appetite for fruit has increased structurally and moreover your appetite for stimulants will certainly have decreased! Try it out, it really is magic!

In other words: the more fruit you eat, the more fruit you eat.. it's as simple as that.


5) Don't make losing weight more complicated as it is
Step five: Just follow the four steps mentioned before and don't complicate things when doing so. Be easy on yourself as long as you are working on it. Just follow the simple steps we give you on this page and eating healthy won't be a punishment anymore. It just will become a whole lot of fun!

Just have fun & five pieces of fruit a day.
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