>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