Kirt:  (re: avocados with skin left on)
>Does this mean I should eat the shell of a peanut and the skin of a banana
>as well? How about the shell of a clam the scales of a salmon and the fur
>of a elk? Or what about the avo pit? ;) (The friend in Peru who raised a
>raw pig for us (years ago) was convinced from personal experience that pigs
>are poisoned by consumption of avo pits, and he should know.)

Tom:
Avo pits are indeed reported to be toxic: the seeds have been ground up and
used to poison mice. The leaves of the avocado tree, in quantity, are toxic
to goats. The skin of the fruit contains two resins that are toxic to guinea
pigs. [Source: "Fruits of Warm Climates", Julia F. Morton]. Years ago, before
I knew it was toxic, I tried to eat an avocado pit - the flavor is really
awful; don't see how anyone could eat a whole pit.

Kirt:
>Seriously, I have heard the French instinctos mention that we should eat
>all the way to the edge/skin/top of a pineapple, that we should chew on the
>seeds in a melon, that we should eat citrus by cutting it in half only and
>scraping it out with our teeth (which has to be the hardest method on tooth
>enamal I can think of!)--all to get an earlier stop so that we wouldn't get
>too much sugar.

Tom:
A friend of mine from Florida, also a long-time raw fooder, claims that if
you eat the citrus peel with the fruit, it will protect your teeth from the
acids. However, truth be told, that same friend has serious dental problems -
severely eroded tooth enamel, and gum recession. So, I think it wise to view
his advice about eating citrus peel with considerable skepticism!

Kirt:
>That said, I am really beginning to question the "role" of fruit fat in the
>human diet, or more precisely: in _my_ diet. Raw olives and avocados are
>delightful to rawsters because of their rich flavors/high fat content. But
>I wonder if they are really second choice fats relative to RAF fats.
...
>Anyway, this makes me wonder if I (and perhaps others) go bonkers on avos
>because, perhaps, our bodies want RAF fats and are getting fruit fats
>instead. The avos taste rich and luscious but never satisfy in the way that
>RAF fats do.

Tom:
Sounds like a real possibility to me. Some months ago I experimented, removing
avocados from my diet, and consuming raw dairy instead (raw milk, warmed to
about 110 degrees F - warm milk much easier to digest than refrigerator cold).
Anyway, when I reduced raw dairy and returned to avocados, the avocados really
didn't taste very good at all. Unless they were very ripe (soft), I found the
avocados more difficult to digest than raw milk! Also, the avocados seemed
to produce a lot more mucus than the raw (goat) milk did.

Kirt: (re: possibility of avocado addiction)
>Now, is a similar thing capable of happening with avos?

Tom:
Avocado addiction can really happen - I had it some years ago. When I first
became a vegetarian, then shortly afterwards became a raw fooder (1970), I found
it fairly easy to give up cooked food, though sweets were quite difficult to
give up. I became a fruitarian, and ate avocados virtually every day. After some
years on a diet that included avocados on a daily basis, I tried to give them up
(as, due to circumstances, their availability was reduced and price much
higher). With *extreme* effort, I was finally able to give them up. However, I
found that giving up avos (after being a raw fooder for some years), was
dramatically harder than giving up cooked foods, or even giving up sugar!
It appears that many raw-fooders are indeed dependent on avocados. Nowadays,
I deliberately exclude avos from my diet for several weeks a year, to avoid
becoming dependent on them. [I omit avos when their quality in the market is
poor, and/or they are too high priced.] Addiction is addiction, the object of
addiction is of secondary importance.

Side note: the dependence of many fruitarians on avocados, a crop native to
Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean, raises questions as to how anyone in
ancient times, who lived outside of those areas, or in areas where coconuts were
not available (prior to cultivation, coconuts were limited to coastal areas),
could have ever followed the supposedly "ideal" 100% fruit diet. Without avos
or coconuts, such a diet would be deficient in fatty acids (among other
nutrients). Of course, in some places there may be alternate fruit fat sources.
However, in many places, the alternate fat sources might not be easy to
obtain - think how much work it would be to extract edible oil from acorns,
for example. This suggests that a "100% fruit diet" would require consuming
nuts, which some fruitarians adamantly reject because of their protein content.
The bottom line on all this, of course, is that a 100% fruit diet is
unrealistic.

Tom Billings
[log in to unmask]