Jo Yoshida <[log in to unmask]>: >The luminaries cited may represent the tip of the iceberg. On the other >hand, is there a possibility that there exists a population of successful >adherents who live in isolation (they don't attend health expos and >conferences and nor communicate through mainstream media, etc) and we don't >know about them so we focus attention on spectacular failures for the most >part? Curious, though, with Bob Avery's M2M, it seems more submissions >relate to problems with Natural Hygiene rather than successes. Can other >list members confirm this? (I don't subscribe) Tom: Given that: 1) many M2M submissions center on problems with NH/raw, 2) some posts on this list (raw-food), some on "raw" (especially the longer bios), and on veg-raw as well, center on problems with raw, 3) much of the e-mail that I get is from people for whom raw is not working, and/or who are ex-rawists for whom raw did not work, 4) after my "problems' talk at last year's SF-LiFE Expo, many people came up to me to report that they were ex-rawists for whom the diet did not work, AND: 5) the claims of success invariably come from those on the diet short-term, 6) nearly all long-term claims of success are invalid because they are false - the person is not strict on the diet, the person binges, the person is not as healthy as claimed, etc. I can think of only one claim of long-term success on fruitarianism, that has the highest credibility; the status of that claim is "unknown" as so little info is available on that person. No claim (to date) is credible, and all the vegan fruitarian "gurus" are either non-strict (two honest souls, neither of whom is in the US or UK) or apparent cheats/fakes (per the information available to me). So, it may be possible that, somewhere on this planet, there are a few successful long-term strict fruitarians. But I don't have any proof of their existence. All I have is the misrepresentations, the word games, the plagiarism, the hostility of certain current fruitarian "gurus" to tell me that the fruitarian movement has a serious problem with integrity and reality. The natural hygiene and living foods groups have similar, but much less severe problems. Regards, Tom Billings [log in to unmask]