Fear is an unsuitable motivation for a diet because of the central role of diet in our lives. There is a difference between rejecting a food based on calm reason, and rejecting a food from an emotional stance based on fear or other negative emotions. If you habitually base a food decision on negative emotions, those negative emotions become a part of your psyche. Another way to say this is that if your diet is motivated by fear, you are effectively bringing fear to the table when you eat. In this way, you are placing fear at the very center of your life: this is a very bad idea, as habitual fear is a toxic emotion. Some readers might claim that fear of unhealthy foods is in fact a good motivation because it will keep you away from bad foods. However, if you think about it, you will reject such reasoning as false, as outlined in the following discussion:

Consider the common example of junk-food. You, personally, choose whether or not to eat junk-food. There are no gangs roaming the streets forcing people to eat junk food at gunpoint. The government does not send police or soldiers into your home to force you to eat junk-food. Not only is junk-food consumption your free choice, but unless you make it yourself, you have to go out and buy it/pay money for it so that you can eat it. Now, since junk-food consumption is a free choice, you can also simply recognize that it is not good for you, and, without any fear, choose to not eat it. Instead of feeling fear or other strong negative emotions when you see (or think of) junk-food, there is the calm, rational knowledge that it is not good for you, so it is best to avoid it, and you simply choose to eat other (better) food instead. Your reaction here, and your food choices, should be based on calm reason, not the implicit promotion of paranoid/pathological fear (or extremist slogans that implicitly promote fear).

To summarize this point: Those who advocate a diet based on the implicit promotion of pathological fear (by "demonizing" certain foods or components of foods, e.g., protein) are promoting eating disorders, a type of mental illness. Are such "experts" credible? Also consider: Will promoting fear really make the world a better place?

• Apply common sense. If you are attempting to follow a raw vegan diet which some claim (in varying degrees) is the "perfect, ideal" diet, the diet you are "designed or created for," why would you ever need much coaching, faith, or positive thinking to succeed on it? Many other people go through life on a diet of meat and potatoes, and they don't need coaching or faith to succeed (to the degree that they do) on such a diet. Does the cow need coaching, faith, or positive thinking to thrive on a diet of grass? Does the tiger need coaching, faith, or positive thinking to thrive on a diet of sambar (deer) meat? Of course not--they are eating their natural diets. Only very few thrive in the long-term on raw vegan diets: What does that suggest about the claim of naturalness of such diets?

  According to the extremists, the raw vegan diet is supposedly your natural, "perfect" diet. If that's true, then one would expect that, after a transition (some weeks or months, but not years), the raw vegan diet should begin to work extremely well for you, and for others following the same dietary path.

  However, if you talk to very many of those trying the diet, you will quickly learn that such diets often don't work as well "as advertised." More precisely, raw vegan diets may be good short-term healing/cleansing diets, but are frequently problematic in the long-term. The numerous excuses offered to explain this away are simply a type of hand-waving, an effort to distract you from the fact that the diet is apparently not working for you, by suggesting that you are being impatient. What is actually happening here, however, is that the extremists simply cannot, and will not, admit the truth--that raw-food vegan diets may be good for some, but not for everyone, that they are not our natural diet per se, but are a narrow restriction of our natural, evolutionary diet.

  
  

• There is an additional danger presented by the claims one often hears that detox may take many years: You may develop actual nutritional deficiencies, or disease, and ignore it because you think it is detox.
  
  This belief has led some raw-fooders to actual harm. The idea that detox takes a very long, indefinite time period is also used by zealous dietary advocates as an unfalsifiable tool to explain bad results on the diet: No matter how long you detox, it is never enough! Further, the fact that you are not getting good results is, to them, proof you need further detox (note the circular logic here). Additionally, the idea that it takes several years for the body to detox enough to get significant results places severe limits on the "self-healing is the only healing" myth that some promote.

  
  

• Further, by blaming you if the diet does not work for you, such blindly emotional advocates are telling you something else as well, namely that dietary dogma is more important to them than you--a person--are!
  
  Promotion of the dogma they endorse is more important to dietary extremists than is the health and well-being of their followers. Of course, no one would admit this publicly, but pay attention to actions here rather than the platitudes offered by diet gurus. One should keep this in mind when evaluating such advocates (and any advice they offer).

  
  

• Another excuse sometimes made is that the food (fruit) is perfect, but those who eat the food (fruit) are imperfect.
  
  Unfortunately, comments like this are based on a serious lack of familiarity with modern cultivation techniques. Even where farming techniques may be "organic," chances are high that the cultivars grown (fruit varieties) are far removed from what truly wild, "natural" fruit is actually like. A review of the Wild vs. Cultivated Fruit table, on this site, shows that modern fruit is not very natural, hence certainly not "perfect." Additionally, such claims clearly place more importance on the food (and dietary dogma) than on the people eating the food.

  
  

• The speculation that failure on the diet is due to non-optimal living conditions and other non-diet factors (pollution, stress, lack of sleep, lack of exercise) is just that: unsupported speculation.
  
  If these factors explain failure on a raw vegan diet, then perhaps they also explain the failure of people on other diets, including macrobiotic, instincto, ovo-lacto-vegetarian, paleo, semi-vegetarian, and so on. In other words, to accept such excuses for raw vegan diets, but not for other diets, is to endorse a double standard. Such speculation also ignores cases of individuals who hold their (raw vegan) diet and lifestyle constant, and experience health improvement by using supplements--e.g., vitamin B-12 supplements. That is, the speculation may be nothing more than a diversionary tactic to deflect attention away from problems with the diet. (Note: It is not being implied that all of the behavior under discussion here is necessarily conscious--in fact, much of it is simple reflex behavior based on a total emotional and psychological identification with the diet.)

  Also, ignoring non-diet factors except to use them on occasion as an excuse for failure of the diet is of questionable intellectual honesty. If these factors are so important, they should be discussed with diet. One does not have to discuss such topics at length; however, their importance and necessity should be made clear. Those promoting a supposedly all-inclusive health system who in actual practice, however, focus almost exclusively on diet (regardless of the theory they promote) logically cannot use outside factors as an excuse when the diet does not work.

  Additionally, apply common sense again. If the diet works only under pristine, stress-free, completely pollution-free, ideal conditions, then ask yourself: How relevant to the modern world is such a diet? People want a diet that works for them, in the modern world that they live in. People are not interested in the utopian fantasies of dietary extremists whose entire philosophy is an exercise in the denial of reality.

• Extremists tend toward absolute and simplistic explanations for reality.
  
  As discussed previously, nature ignores such foolishness. Besides the obvious logical errors of such views, there is also an emotional component as well. Those who delude themselves into thinking they understand nature perfectly--or the only things about nature in their scheme of things that matter, perfectly--often are emotionally inflexible (i.e., emotionally absolutist) and display some of the following traits: fanaticism, reactionary, intense hostility, manic-depressive behavior, anger, etc. You might observe this in the writings and/or behavior of such individuals.

  The hostility displayed toward those who disagree also strongly discourages dissent and independent thinking. This situation is a fascinating psychological phenomenon, except when you happen to be a target of the mindless hostility displayed by certain extremists! Such behavior, when evident, speaks directly to the lack of credibility and the mental balance (or apparent lack thereof) of the incurably fanatical dietary advocate.

  
  

• Some dietary oracles effectively worship dietary teachers of the past: T.C. Fry, Herbert Shelton, Arnold Ehret, and others.
  
  Some of the teachings of such individuals are worthwhile, but others are outdated or simply incorrect. The idea that "Shelton said it, so therefore it is TRUTH" is narrow-minded, and promotes authoritarianism rather than independent thought. In the field of natural hygiene, the American Natural Hygiene Society is updating and revising, at least in part, some of Shelton's teachings to reflect new information. This is necessary--growth and change are a part of life; if they are absent, there is stagnation. Within the natural hygiene movement, however, there is now a major division as a result--those who want to keep natural hygiene current with new scientific findings vs. those who view any attempts at change as heretical attacks against the movement's grand synthesist (Shelton). The attitude of modern disciples or dietary missionaries regarding the teachers of the past provides some insight into whether the person clings to old, outdated dogma or actively investigates reality.

  
  

• The desire for absolute certainty or "eternal" revealed truths in the field of diet and health is an earmark of religion rather than science.
  
  Science is not just an end result, but an ongoing process of change and the willingness to reevaluate old beliefs (theories) in the light of new information. The missionary who presents unchanging, absolute, simplistic "laws" regarding diet and health is really presenting their false religion as scientific fact. Perhaps such individuals are simply religious fanatics out of place. That is, their diet has become their religion, and they are fundamentalist zealots, out to save the world from the "evil demons" of cooked food and/or animal foods. (If that is the case, how/when did cooked foods and animal foods become demons?)

  Note: The above is not intended as a criticism of religion; people have the right to choose their religion. Instead, the above is intended to point out that some extremists may be promoting their "dietary religion" as science, and doing so in a negative, fanatical manner.

  
  

• Another trait of extremists is that they tend to promote themselves as the proof, or at least as prime examples, that their diet works and is "best."
  
  Yet given the reality that very few thrive on such diets in the long-term, the claim by extremists that "it works for me, hence it can and will work for anybody/everybody," is very dubious, and in any case, based on invalid logic. The claim is that a few exceptions (such as themselves), somehow, prove a general rule. However, exceptions are used in reality to illustrate how the exception differs from the general rule, i.e., to clarify the general rule itself better, what cases it covers, what it doesn't, etc. In other words, exceptions do not prove a rule; because if they did, they would be bona fide examples of the rule, rather than the exceptions they actually are.

  An example may clarify the preceding. To be frank, the experience of the writers on this site regarding the few supposedly successful fruitarians, the "exceptions," is that such claims are often illusory or dubious, and usually fail (eventually) to hold up for one or more of the following reasons.

  • The person has been on the diet only a very short time--a few weeks or months. This is very common among wanna-be raw "personalities." Even a year or two or three is really not a long enough time to make definitive assessments about the long-term workability of a diet. Riding high on a wave of (perhaps understandable) enthusiasm, the individual may offer themselves up as an example, speaking out long before they have accumulated--or had a chance to observe, in others--much noteworthy experience. Even when they do hear of others' less-than-exemplary results, blinded by their own initial flush of short-term success, the poor track record of others on the diet often simply fails to register or is infinitely rationalized.

  • The person claims to be a fruitarian, but uses a different definition of fruit and/or fruitarian than the one used here, i.e., their diet is less than 75+% fruit, or they use a broader definition of the word fruit. (Often so broad--nuts, seeds, leafy greens, etc.--that their "fruitarian" diet is in some cases little different than that of a raw-foodist in general.)

  • The person actually eats a more varied diet than they claim, i.e., actual diet is different from the claimed diet, and/or they binge-eat, cheat, or make "exceptions" to their nominally 100% raw and/or "fruitarian" regime.

  • The person's physical health might not be as good as claimed. (T.C. Fry defending fruitarianism while he was on his deathbed comes to mind here--see "The Life and Times of T.C. Fry" in the Nov. 1996 issue of the Health & Beyond newsletter, for details.)

  • The mental health or psychological balance and well-being of the fruitarian may be questionable (e.g., hateful fanaticism, denial of reality, extreme emotional fragility--just challenge their diet and you may see this firsthand, etc.).

  Obviously, success claims made when any one of the first four of the above five conditions exists automatically invalidate themselves, and claims by those exhibiting behavior outlined in the final condition have to be considered highly suspect. (Often one finds out that under closer questioning, one of the other conditions turns out to apply anyway, when all is said and done.)

  Here, the heavily self-oriented and self-promotional emphasis on the guru's own success (or that of a very few associates) is proffered as the ultimate justification for their diet. Again, this simply illustrates another facet of the often extreme subjectivity (and consequent lack of concern for a more balanced attempt at objectivity) that typifies the lack of credibility of such advocates.

Reminder: The principal writers on this site have long experience in raw diets. In many cases, we have more experience than some of the prominent extremists.

• Have you noticed just how rare strict long-term 100% raw vegans are?
  
  How very few people have been on the diet more than a few years full-time, and without any binges, cheating, "exceptions," or "backsliding"? Have you searched for ex-fruitarians, or ex-rawists, and found them to be more plentiful and much easier to find than those currently on the diet? The point of these questions is to illustrate that fruitarianism rarely if ever works in the long term. (Note that other raw diets tend to work better long-term than fruitarianism. Also, raw diets that are less than 100% raw often work better than 100% raw--surprising but true.) Those who have followed the diet (relatively strictly) continuously, for a short term--less than, say, 5 years (a description of some of the extremists advocating fruitarianism)--cannot realistically call themselves a success. Is someone on the diet for a short term a credible example of success?

  
  

• There is a more serious side to the issue of success, a side that deserves discussion. The argument may be made that "fruitarianism did not work for you, but it works well for me" (where me = a fruitarian advocate).
  
  The problem is, as discussed above, that if one closely examines some of the "role models" of fruitarianism, one often finds, in time, that many of these role models display eating-disorder behavior (binges and/or lying about eating), or other signs (in my opinion) of possible mental unbalance. So, when someone says that "fruitarianism works for me," it can be very hard to believe. Somewhere there may be credible fruitarians who follow the diet very strictly for very long periods, who are physically healthy and mentally balanced, but I have not met any in my opinion. To be complete, I should say that I have met a very few, non-strict fruitarians who appear to be relatively healthy. Perhaps the key to success on a fruitarian diet is to not be so strict, and to include a variety of foods in the diet?

  
  

• Further, there is something else here that should be obvious. When an extremist tells you their raw diet is "ideal," and that if someone else (e.g., any of the contributors on this site) is derogatorily called a failure or backslider because the diet didn't work for them, you should immediately conclude that if the diet does not work for you, then YOU will be branded a failure as well.
  
  Think about that, if you are considering trying fruitarianism, and you are looking for a teacher or mentor. This type of behavior, when apparent, is about the clearest evidence one could ask for to confirm that such a guru cares more about their dogma than the health of their followers.

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