Welcome back to the mainland, Zephyr!

>Kirt:
>>I question how much
>>fruit fat was ever available to our prehistoric ancestors. Besides avos and
>>olives I have only seen one other rich fruit and it was in the Amazon water
>>shed, probably a wild variety.(It was about the size of an egg and the seed
>>was nearly as big as the entire fruit. The orange buttery flesh was only as
>>thick as an eggshell and was scrapped off with the teeth and one ended up
>>with a mess all over the fingers and chin--but what a tasty mess! If
>>anybody ever subjected _that_ fruit to a thousand generations of artificial
>>selection, I bet avos would be toppled from their current pedastal in the
>>raw world ;)

>Zephyr:
>Well, I know that coconuts are a "nut" but they certainly have fat in them.

Yeah. Thanks for the mention of coconut; I had forgotton about it. That
does throw an interesting wrench into my musings...does it appear that
instinctos overeat cocos to you? Perhaps young cocos, but mature and fatty
ones as well? When we lived in Thailand we rarely ate mature cocos, almost
always preferring the young ones. I assume the young ones have less fat by
analysis, but...well, don't know how cooc's might fit into my fruit fat
wonderings! Let me chew on it for a while ;)

>Also, did this fruit remind you of an egg fruit (canistel <sic>)?

No, the fruit was nothing like an egg fruit, not even close, though its
shape was truer to a hen's egg than even an egg fruit. It woulda rocked
your world ;)

Kirt:
>>"Advanced" just means that it is not likely to interest a "beginner". I
>>think Bruno Cromby uses the term for such foods, including fresh insects,
>>moldy coconuts, rotten crabs, etc. as well as other aged RAFs.

Z:
>I hung out with Bruno for several weeks last year in Marin, and by
>advanced he merely means forward in time.  Advanced broccoli is broccoli
>that has advanced in linear time past normally considered ripeness and is
>advancing towards being compost.  (Christopher Morrill is quite advanced
>at advanced broccoli:-)  Advanced meat would be meat this is starting to
>collect noticable collections of not appearing to be just the original
>meat or organ due to extended exposure to air and the many tiny organisms
>that entail it.  Advanced bananas are brown, etc.

Thanks! I hate to muss these things up and welcome the correction!

Kirt:
>>Zephyr mentioned that eating the skin (on Avos) would make it change
>>better a while back and I thought he was putting me on! But I guess not, eh?
>>'m still not sure...

Z:
>Another delayed response here.  Yes Kirt, I do eat the skins on avos.
>I'm to the point that I pretty much eat only avocados that I am liking
>the skin at the same time.  Occasionally I'll get a stop on the skin but
>still like the flesh, but this is totally "natural."  I eat skins on
>avos, cherimoyas, bananas (but I don't eat mainland imported
>Williams/Cavindish/Chaquita type bananas), papayas (though not as
>regularily), and mamey.  I haven't liked any Mango skin yet, and of
>course theres a cornacopia of skin jokes on the tip of my tongue
>(fingers) that I'll give someone else of telling (this time).

>I vastly prefer both avos and bananas with the skin, it helps digestion,
>gives me a vegetable type food with it, leaves less mess, and best of all
>it makes people who don't know me well stare at me oddly while I'm
>eating:-)

Interesting stuff. Shock effect aside, I commend you for following your
taste so thoroughly.

But I'm starting to wonder:

Is instincto coming to a stage that NH seems to have been stuck in for
decades? Namely, that for all the beauty and elegance of its basic tenets,
it still doesn't give its practitioners the Perfect Health which one
supposes it "should". Thus instead of examining its a priori tenets
carefully and with honest scrutiny, more and more extreme practices are
purported to correct any remaining inadequecies. For example some NHers
have, at various times, considered the "problem" with NH diets to be "too
much fruit" "too many nuts" "too much acid fruit" "too much sweet fruit"
"too many veggies" "too much negativity" "too much sex" "too much stress"
"too few leafy greens" "too few blended veggies" "too much food" "too
little food" "too little fasting" "too much fasting" "too many meals" "too
much effort" "too much time between meals" "too concentrated foods" etc
etc. All the while ignoring that the vegan a priori of NH might deserve
more honest scrutiny.

So far from instinctos I have heard "eat the skins of fruits" "eat your
meals at the market" "insects are the best RAF" "eat only if all signals
are 'full green'" "eat your veggies everyday" etc.--all of which seem to be
adressing the issue of overeating fruit (or with insects, overeating RAF).
And like NH, instincto has a tendency to consider all problems one
encounters to be matters of detox, or the degradation of the organism from
past abuses, or the other aspects of Wrongful Living (exercising too much,
exercising too little, working a neurotic job, being in neurotic
relationships, not enough sun, too much sun, not enough sleep, etc.). But,
while there is a pretty good argument for all these singular points of
view, wouldn't it be easier to start off with a little less zeal in the
first place? Might the instincto a priori of "the taste-change will protect
one from overeating a particular food" simply may be wrong more than right
in our current circumstance?

More and more subtle cues are promoted as the "real" taste change, but for
myself if, when I'm eating a food, I'm running a dialogue in my head about
"is that the stop?" then I seem to be quite non-instinctive and very
neo-cortically driven. Indeed, if I'm wondering about a stop, that itself
is probably a stop since I am not entirely "consumed" with the pleasure of
the food anymore! If I turn off my neo-cortex and follow my sensory
pleasure, then I tend to overeat (and wouldn't be surpised if a wild troop
of chimps presented with "unlimited" modern raw foods wouldn't do the
same). OK, so then we are back to correcting the "problem" of the over- and
under-supply of particular modern foods. Why not toss out the "eat till the
taste-change" a priori and start with "select your foods according to
sensory attraction and try not to overeat"? When someone is on top of a
particular food they will probably be unable or unwilling to eat only a
little of it anyway, so they aren't likely to miss a larger intake of a
particular food when needed (and I agree they sometimes are).

And, as always, I consider the instincto line on veggies (they are
relatively unattractive because they have been bred for blandness) very
weak. It ignores that wild vegetation is even less attractive in moderate
or large amounts. If cooking our vegetables was a double-edged sword
("nuetralizing" naturally-occuring toxins but increasing access to
non-thermobile nutrients at the cost some molecular denaturing), I suspect
the reverse may be true as well: eating all our veggies raw may at best be
a chore, and at worst be a double-edged sword (rotated 180 degrees of
course) where naturally-occuring toxins are maximized to get thermobile
nutrients.

Still dragging myself out to the garden to eat my leafy greens straight
(when I'm not having a salad!),
Kirt