The 80/10/10 Diet: Why the Low Fat Fruitarian Diet Is Risky
Before you think of trying the low-fat high-fruit diet, currently known as:
- the 80/10/10 diet or 811, or
- the fruitarian diet
please read the stories of those whose hair and teeth fell out, trying the 80/10/10 diet, at rawfood author Rhio’s site, rawfoodinfo.com.
Click on “Hotline” then under January 2006 you’ll see it begins with “Fruitarian Diet and 80/10/10 Fruitarian Diet - Part 1″ and continues in each issue (05/06, 11/06, 01//07).
On a fruitarian diet, hair and teeth can fall out from fatty acid deficiency. Our brain is king. From its earliest days when still in the foetus, it begins to take control and stand first in line for nutrients. With the 80/10/10 diet, the brain is grabbing for itself the minimalist fats coming in, while hair and teeth get short-changed.
The 80/10/10 diet tries to turn the king into a pauper. It ignores the HUGE needs of our human brain for unsaturated plant fats. Read this page in the September 2000 issue of Nutrition Science News.
Our brain invests heavily in fats. It uses saturated fats for the insulating material round our nerve fibers (myelin sheath) and uses highly unsaturated fats for the signaling structures (neurons) and billions of neurotransmitter sites (dendrites) – “neither protein nor carbohydrate have this same wide physical versatility” (Michael Crawford and David Marsh in Nutrion and Evolution).
The 80/10/10 diet claims that glucose is the brain’s primary fuel. It fails to mention that the fuel is useless without the structures, and they are built with fats.
EATING RAW: DIETARY SOURCES FOR UNSATURATED FATS
Today you don’t need shell-fish and wild game for your polyUFAs (Unsaturated Fatty Acids). In fact a seed milk or yogurt four days a week, coupled with an avocado or raw olives or a handful of nuts daily, should meet all your needs. If you like cold-pressed oil, then a little olive or flax oil is fine.
When you don’t eat enough UFAs, you get irritable, feel stressed, and over-react to small things. Your brain is not getting the nutrients it needs to respond to the bombardment of external stimuli. Your finger-nails and hair may turn brittle, and your skin dry.
You know your hair grows thicker when you drink seed milks. In fact, since I gave up saturated fats (cheese) my hair is turning brown again. Meat, fish and bird I stopped in 1972, but cheese only this year in January (2007).
Plant fats help me to feel happy and balanced. I consciously make two seed yogurts every Monday, eat them by Thursday, then I may make more yogurt or I’ll drink 2 seed milks between Thursday and Monday.
THE SEDUCTIVE LURE OF THE 80/10/10 DIET
It’s so seductive, eat sweet fruits! Who wouldn’t be tempted? It makes health sound so easy – eat fruit all day with some greens for supper. Keep fats from nuts, seeds, avocado and olives to an all-time low.
The fruitarian 80/10/10 diet has been around a long time – first popularized by Herbert Shelton in 1937 – and continues to this day in the Natural Hygiene movement. It’s so pervasive, even popping up in best-sellers like Marilyn & Harvey Diamonds Fit For Life.
It claims that: “man is naturally frugivorous” and “sweet fruits give the greatest amount of nourishment for the least amount of digestive strain” (Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Food and Nutrition, 1937).
More recently, Douglas Graham writes in The 80/10/10 Diet (2006):
“In nature, humans would be frugivores only. A frugivore is a creature that lives primarily on fruits, with the addition of tender greens … Fruits are replete with the nutrients our bodies require – in the proportions that we need them.”
80/10/10 DIET IGNORES OUR HUMAN BRAIN
The 80/10/10 diet is based on a totally unproven premise that we humans once swung happily from tree to shining tree like chimps. Therefore fruit and green leaves are our natural diet.
The proven truth-to-date is that when humans first appear in the archeological record 75,000 years ago, they are eating a diet of 50% or more fat, mainly from shell-fish and fish. I’m contacting the scientist leading this dig, to ask him the exact percentages.
It’s this polyunsaturated fat that built our brain! The one organ which separates us from all other species.
Because chimps and other apes eat fruit and green leaves, they are stuck poking sticks down a termite hole. While your brain just built a spaceship that’s on its way into the outer solar system, due to arrive on Pluto in 2015.
Yes I eat fruit and LIVING baby greens every single day, either blended in a Green Smoothie or in salad. But I also consciously ensure I get my polyUFAs.
The 80/10/10 Diet does not work because it’s extremist and unbalanced. We are not built to eat 80% of our calories as carbohydrates in the form of fruit, that’s about 60% by volume. Nearly 60% of your brain is unsaturated fat, not fruit sugar!
I’m writing an eBook on Fats – what fats we need, why we need them, how much (definitely a variable of daily activity) and where to get them. Also includes fats in the history of human diet. If you’d like a copy, please be sure to subscribe to this blog by feed or by email.
Eating Raw: How to Experience Super Health on a Raw Food Diet
It takes a clear understanding of all factors, to stay in balance. That’s why I reprint Ann Wigmore’s chart here (highly amplified by me). This chart with its Recipes, is the key to eating raw – NOT fruits!
Rhio writes in her newsletter Raw Energy Hotline at rawfoodinfo.com:
“My idea of a balanced and well-rounded raw food diet for humans includes foods from all categories, except meat, bird, fish and dairy. I believe in being INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive, including as many different types and varieties of fruits and vegetables as possible with moderate consumption of soaked and/or sprouted nuts and seeds.”
“I also include roots, baby sprouts, leafy greens, soaked and sprouted legumes, soaked and sprouted grains in moderation, bee products, fermented seed cheese & yogurt, sauerkraut, wild vegetables (sometimes called edible weeds), sea vegetables, good quality oils, small amounts of dehydrated snacks occasionally, etc. I also believe in low heat processed, food-based supplements when needed or desired.”
“So, from the above, you can surmise that the fruitarian diet or 80/10/10 diet would not be my idea of a balanced approach to the raw food diet.”
