>Tom said:
>>Wild avocados are often very fibrous and hard to eat, compared to
>>cultivated.

>Peter said:
>They are sometimes available at the Santa Monica Farmers Market and
>sell under the name "wild root" or "Mexican" avocado. They are very low
>fat and sometimes quite fibrous. They are my favorites especially when
>eaten as is with the skin on. My guess is that the reason some
>instinctive eaters do not get any taste stop with avocados is that they
>are eating the hybrid kind without the skin.

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

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.)

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.

Now, I'm all for adjustments to "instinct" to make up for the problems in
the modern-day food supply, but if we are conscious enough to devise such
"unnatural" methods to eat raw foods (I have seen monkeys wadge manderins
and spit out the fiber/pulp--hardly a method for getting a stop early!),
then we should be able simply (easier said than done) to quit early on
foods we know are being overeaten. Indeed, isn't it the same self-control
being used to eat avo skin that would be useful in not cutting into (or
buying in the first place!) the extra avo? I question whether eating a
relatively toxic avo skin would be more harmful than eating the extra avo
that it may pre-empt.

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. I am
finding that as I increase my consumption of fatty fish
(salmon/sardines/mackeral) that I am finally getting some stops on
avos--granted, the stops are not like the stops evident in aged raw
seafoods, but the avo's special allure to me has slipped considerably as
Melisa and I are concentrating more on RAF (testing everyday and thus
eating 4 or 5 times/week), instead of waiting until we feel unsatisfied on
plant foods before giving RAF a try. In fact, the most drastic avo taste I
ever got was in New Zealand when my RAF consuption (beef and oysters) was
relatively high (though not as high as the last few weeks).

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. Imagine folks eating processed sugar instead of fruit to
satisfy their "sweet tooth"--but processed sugar isn't what they really
need, so their sweet tooth is always demanding more: the candy tastes sweet
but doesn't really provide the molecular "right stuff". A troubling
addiction develops. (As has been amply discussed in the last week of posts,
this may easily happen with the too-sweet modern fruits.)

Now, is a similar thing capable of happening with avos? 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 ;)) I imagine that truly wild avos (and olives?) had a similarly
low edible portion percentage. In any event, avos are a New World fruit
which means our species didn't cut its evolutionary teeth on it anyway. All
of which leads me to wonder if fruit oils don't fool us by tasting "close
enough" to the richness of RAF fat, but, being different in important ways
from RAF, do not satisfy our "fat tooth" over time.

Comments? I am just wondering out loud about this...

Cheers,
Kirt

PS Anyone else get a kick this week out of produce department signs
enticing avo sales by the sign "ripe for the superbowl!" I can only imagine
the whole crowd around the TV, setting aside the brewskis and the chips as
the resident matron comes out with a big heaping basket of halved avos for
the fellers in their cheesehead hats to scarf down...

So very proud to be from Wisconsin on a day like today ;) :)

Double cheers,
Kirt