Thursday, December 13, 2007

Do we all have different nutritional needs?

Some years back, a decade or so ago, I was living in a French vegetarian/vegan community up in the mountains close to the Spanish border.

A community called Douceur et Harmonie, at a place called El-Faitg.

There was this elderly woman there, the founder of the community, her name was Viviane.. If she's still in the same body today, then she would be in her 90s by now..

Anyhow, Viviane had this theory that we all had different physiological/nutritional needs, and that some of us just could not live well on an all raw vegan diet, let alone solely fruit..

I recall she wrote about it making a comparison to how the horse chestnut tree and the sweet chestnut tree, although looking similar, had very different needs as far as their soil was concerned.. one preferring it more acidic than the other, or something similar..

She said the same was true for humans, in that we may all look similar, but that our needs were actually different..

But her logic was clearly fundamentally flawed, and as much as she may have been right that horse chestnuts and sweet chestnuts looked similar, they were still nevertheless 2 completely separate species.. Like she was comparing Pandas to Polar bears.. Had she compared sweet chestnut tree, to sweet chestnut tree, she would have seen that they all had the same basic requirements..

Similarly (sort of), ancient ayurvedic philosophy, divided humans up into 3 main body types (or doshas as I believe they called them), each with different nutritional requirements (pitta, vatta and kapha).. and the more modern version, especially since the advent of the book Eat Right For Your Type by Peter J. D’Adamo, divides people up depending on their blood type.. (The theory goes that people with "Type A" blood are best off as vegetarians, while people with "Type O" blood are natural born zombie flesh eaters. and the "Type B's" are somewhere in the middle, needing cheesy yogurt lasagnas no doubt..

But I propose that they are all wrong.. We are far more similar than any of these philosophies care to admit..

Of course at any given point in time, our individual requirements may differ, but overall we are all fundamentally physiologically alike.. Are stomachs and hearts are generally in the same places.. as are our kidneys liver and lungs.. all serving the same anatomical purposes..

What the ayurvedics, and the blood type diet people are seeing, is apparently different types of people.. but these apparent different types, are just different bodies having been consistently abused in different ways..

Once the body returns to a truly good state of health, it will become clear how those seeming differences were nothing more than self inflicted, and that we are truly all fruitarian.

Nothing will sustain us, maintain us, nurture us and help us evolve as a species more than returning to a fruit centered diet.

Swimmin in the pond

hugs for all,
Mango the Fruitarian

Blogged with Flock

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Dear Mango,
Thank you for your words of wisdom.

May I ask you about tranistioning from a vegan to a fruitarian diet?

I currently eat two, fruitarian mono-meals per day. Every other day I'm eating a third fruitaian monomeal. It is typically a mexican papaya.

After the third fruitarian monomeal I feel very: Cold, Weak, and Cloudy-headed. Please advise.

Thank you.

Om Mani Padme Hum,
Lama Jigme

Fruitarian Mango said...

Hi lama-jigme,

i am working on a post on detox..i'm a slow writer as have to gather my thoughts..

i believe the symptoms you are experiencing are detox, so i hope the post will be relevant.

i am also writing a book, but tend to procrastinate a lot with it..hopefully i'll get it finished one day!

regards and good wishes to you,
mango

Fruitarian Mango said...

hi again lama-jigme..
i finished the detox post.. it is here: some thoughts on detoxing.

feel free to comment.

I'm sure it is not the last I will write on the subject, so keep posted!

regards,
Mango.

Anonymous said...

hi mango

I came across your blog through blogrush. Greetings! I don't solely eat fruits or veges for my diet but I do acknowledge that we need to live on more (much much more than we actually are doing) on fruits and veges. And that we require less (much much much less than we are actually having) nutrition from non-plant foods. I run a blog myself called FoodIsRemedy talking mainly on the curative and health preserving nature of daily foods. I like your blog. It's very inspirational. And you raised a very good point on our biochemistry individuality perhaps being largely self-inflicted.

bob (the traveller)

Anonymous said...

Mango, this is a great article on the subject. We're all One, so why would We have different 'needs'. You put it really clearly.

I want to encourage You to get Your book done, and You write clearly and concisely, and the points are difficult to cavil (about).

Going to read what You wrote about detox.

What I notice is that what gets in the way is wanting some unconscious, heavier stuff, like avocados, although all-juicy, no-fat, is so illuminating.

Thank You,
Sun~Rose

Fruitarian Mango said...

Hi SunRose,
thanks for that..
and thanks for the encouragement.. I have been procrastinating far too long with my book, and really feel a need to totally immerse myself in it for a while, and just get it finally done.. keep prodding me!

hi bob,
thanks for dropping by, yep, fruit is heavily under evaluated, so glad to be an inspiration!

regards,
Mango.
regards,
Mango.

Anonymous said...

Here I am, back, Mango, after reading your excellent article on nuts/detox etc. and wishing I had your book to enjoy and learn from.

I know it took me about 2 years to get my book done, and what a wonderful feeling when it was when it was done and published. It was partly inertia, and partly because it was Guided, and more chapters kept coming.

It is a very happy feeling to know that people are buying and reading it, even though I've done about zip to promote it myself, having my hands quite full.

It's on being raw vegan and what the blessings are.

Also, I've emailed you back twice to say that if you would like to interview my daughter and me, that would be fun.

And I've shared this blog on another website where a conversation began with someone bringing up a film: Animal Brothers, that I'd not ever heard of; however, it generated some beautiful responses.

Love,
Sun~Rose

p.s. If at any time I can be of help proofreading, spell-checking, transcribing, or whatever for you, just let me know. I do a tremendous amount of transcribing, so it would be a pleasure to be of help, if that suited you.

Anonymous said...

p.s. I forgot to say that the emails came back, saying they had permanent errors?

Maybe your email is not respondable?

Love,
Sun~Rose

Fruitarian Mango said...

hi sun-rose,
not sure why my email is giving you permanent errors, but i just sent tou an email, and will prepare interviews for you and your daughter.. thanks!
regards,
Mango.