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.
- 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.
