>Tom:
>> The household fruit is much better than the commercial, of course.

Rex:
>Not necessarily---and you have reminded me of a funny story.

Tom:
True, but if you have a household who uses compost and/or manure on their
trees, and allows the fruit to ripen fully, then you will get really high
quality fruit.

Rex:
>Of course if you're telling me that I miraculously, or mysteriously, missed the only
>area that had such delectable fare, I'll have to take your word for it.  :)

Tom:
The coquina limestone in that part of the Island is very shallow, making for
higher mineralization. The fruit I got was amazingly good - vastly superior
to supermarket fare.

Rex:
>I assume you know that California oranges, as a whole, are not particularly sweet, per
>the Florida growers.

Tom:
Indeed. California citrus in general, is pretty low quality.

>Tom:
>> limes that were as sweet as regular (store bought) grapefruit? Oranges so

Tom:
I forgot to mention that I found a lime tree in an abandoned grove whose
limes (limes, not lemons) were the size of grapefruits and just as sweet.
Amazing!  :-)   But also bad for your tooth enamel.  :-(

Rex:
>Well, I don't consider 'excellent' as impossibly high quality.  But let me do a reality
>check: are you saying that it's possible for a long-term fruitarian to succeed?  I

Tom:
I was aiming squarely at what I perceived as a rationalization, specifically:
one can succeed as a fruitarian IF you get fruit of very high (impossibly
high, for most) quality.

As mentioned previously, I obtained fruit of amazing quality and did not
succeed, long-term, despite slavishly following the fruitarian diet guru,
Arnold Ehret. Thus I strongly disagree with the rationalization above.

Is it possible, in general, for a long-term fruitarian to succeed?
A short answer: to date, I have seen virtually no credible examples.
There are one or two people who claim to have succeeded on a long-term
diet based on avocados (and NOT on sweet fruit or cucumbers, the diet of
extremists). However, I don't have enough data on the avo-diet folks to
fully assess them.

Otherwise, all of the fruitarian role-models who claim to be success
stories are, in my assessment, fakes. They fail the test of credibility
for a number of reasons:

* on the diet short term

* emaciated and/or physically unhealthy

* are known plagiarists (liars)

* are hostile; e.g., the crank science promoters who are so hateful they
get thrown off multiple e-mail lists. Irrational, aggressive, hateful,
and dishonest behavior are common (we have seen it on this list),
among the fruitarian diet gurus. Look in the archives (try Nov 96-Jan 97
as a starting point), if you don't believe me.

* display food obsessions and eating disorder behavior (orthorexia nervosa)
--do a search of the archives for info on orthorexia

* claim to live, thrive and vigorously exercise on a diet far below
starvation levels (one fruitarian diet guru - an obvious fake - has
claimed this for years)

* display other symptoms of poor mental health: mood swings, extreme
emotional fragility (just challenge their diet and you will see this first-
hand, etc.)

The above is just a partial list. The fruitarian movement has little
credibility, no thanks to the extremists who want to be leaders in
it.

Tom Billings