Fruit and trying 80/10/10

Many healthy eating regimens are anti fruit to some degree. The Brian Clement/Hippocrates approach is against the runaway sugars of hybridized fructose. Macrobiotics suggests only a little fruit as it's generally very Yin. The GI/GL dietary approach is anti-fruit as most are quickly burned-up by the body unlike slower burn complex carbs - some exceptions are apples, pears and berries.

So when someone comes along and advocates near-fruitarianism, as with Dr Douglas Graham's 80/10/10 diet, it instinctively feels wrong to me. I'm someone who likes the feeling of not having wildly fluctuating blood sugars and the highs and low in moods that can bring.

However, the raw low/non-fruit idea can present problems when following a hectic daily lifestyle. It's not always possible to have enough calories on hand. Thus, instead of the highs and lows of fluctuating blood sugars caused by refined sugars in the standard western diet (or by too much fruit according to many healthy eating advocates) you are left with frequent hunger, cravings and a constantly lowish blood sugar. This can leave you wan, listless, lacking get-up-and go. Too little gloucose and brain function is impaired and it becomes hard to organise one's thoughts. Beyond that, one can get a bit woosy.

80/10/10 has some very vocal advocates in the raw food movement singing its praises to the rafters. To be honest, far fewer people are so vocal in their praise of the no-fruit Hippocrates appraoch with its seemingly complex time-consuming sprouting, raw grain breads, green juices, wheatgrass, sunflower greens, algaes, etc. The mega-greens, mega-sprouts, approach might be good if you can make food prep a full-time job.

Doug Graham's 80/10/10 shuns superfoods, shuns sprouting, shuns all grains (even sprouted ones), all supplementation, doesn't even prescribe organic produce as a must. The fairly simple concept, backed up by various bits of nutritional science, is that 80% of our calories should be in the form of fruit and vegetables (mostly fruit), 10% should be protien (again coming from fruit and veg) and 10% fat (from limited intake of things like avocado and coconut). Low protein, low fat is now accepted by many healthy eaters, not just raw ones and is the basic conclusions of health masterwork, The China Study. It's the high-fructose content that raises eyebrows with the 80/10/10 approach.

Put simply, Graham suggests that the body needs to work less hard to convert the simple sugars, the simple carbs, in fruits to useful energy in the body. He's anti the complex carbs that most of us get from grains, which is in stark contrast to the Hippocrates approach or the slow-burn-is-good GI/GL theory. Many people might eat fruit if they need fast, easy energy for, say, sports but Graham suggests eating loads of fruit every day. Basically, it means a big fruity brekkie, a fruity lunch and a big greens and veggie salad in the evening.

Still, you can't ignore all the voices of those who didn't feel like they'd 'cracked' the raw diet until they went 80/10/10 so I decided to give it a go. I've decided to give it a month, which is a reasonable timeframe, and see what happens. At the time of writing I'm five days in to the regimen and I'm following it pretty close to what Graham's book suggests to give it a fair go. It's a lot of fruit!

What have I noticed so far? Well, let's start with the positives. Remember, I'm just a few days in to this way of eating.

I feel quite energetic with the extra fast-burn energy food inside me - you do have to eat a lot of fruit, mind you. With a big fruit breakfast and a fruit lunch, hunger's been pretty minimal and if any hunger at all has been seen I've just had a little piece of fruit and that sorted me out without further cravings. The added simple sugars has given me rather more mental clarity and I haven't had any of the mental listlessness I'd get if I knew I simply hadn't eaten enough calories on no-fruit raw. Following the 80/10/10 diet is very easy - you just have to buy a bunch of fruit and veggies and it's easy to eat what the diet suggests. There's no worries that I forgot to sprout something in time to make this or that or where the wheatgrass is at. It's really, really easy to eat. I still drink very minor amounts of coffee in my very-high-raw life but the 80/10/10 diet seems to supress caffiene cravings very well. In fact, I haven't craved anything on it so far.

What are the downsides, then?

Well, I'm not sure I really like the sweetness of much of the fruit I've been eating. In nature, here in England at least, wild fruits are seldom as sweet as what you buy in the shops, organic or not. I'm eating pears, apples, peaches, nectarines, bananas, etc. that taste positively syrupy. This syrupy taste hangs around in the mouth for ages. I'm just not used to it. I've eaten some wild English blackberries and mulberries recently - they are either mild and subtle in flavour or slighty tart, nothing like cultivated fruit. Am I being bona fide natural eating all this bred-for-sweetness hybridised fruit? Is the energy I've seen nothing more than a big sugar buzz, a phoney energy, that can't possibly be sustained over any length of time? We shall see.
Also, I seem to need to urinate at least twice as often on so much fruit. Of course, most of it has a high water content but can that really be good?

Just a few days in, all I can offer are first impressions. Unless the diet makes me feel obviously bad I'll continue with 80/10/10 for a month.