"Why She Never Eats Bananas, and Why I Do"

I met a very nice person a while back named Gina. We've been corresponding a bit via email as well. She's very excited about raw foods, but as is usually the case, she has been given lots of false information on which she's basing her dietary decisions.

In fact, she reminds me of myself about 10 years ago. I thought I knew a lot about nutrition. But I was filled with a bunch of unsound and unscientific information from the popular raw food and general diet books out there.

Of course, it was just such misinformation that made me fail on the raw food diet over and over again. Without the right information and support, most people are going to make a ton of mistakes and then wrongly blame it all on the raw food diet.

Compared to most people, even back then, I was a nutrition expert, but compared to what I know now, I was like in the third grade of nutritional school. I remember talking about nutrition and having this guy who overheard my conversation think I was a diet expert and that was over 11 years ago before I'd succeeded at staying 100% raw.

If he was fooled by my level of misinformation at that time, imagine how many people get constantly fooled by scientific sounding arguments in popular nutrition books.

Just because a doctor says it's right, it should be right. And yet most of the doctors contradict each other like crazy in these books. So being a doctor or scientist is not the only criterion to look for when judging the information you read.

Gina mentioned in a previous email that she would never eat bananas. I asked her to explain to me why she wouldn't. Below is her brief reply to me and my detailed explanation to her.

Much of her information is based on a popular diet book called "The pH Miracle." You have to be really careful with what you read because it can really lead you down the wrong path.

When you are new and inexperienced to nutrition and diet books it's very easy to be taken and overly swayed by the scientific sounding arguments. But many of these books are made up of half-truths and not based on facts. Or if they are based on facts, they only give you a small part of the nutritional picture, which doesn't work in real life.

I know what I teach works because I've seen the amazing results in hundreds of people. It has transformed my life and that of my coaching clients. Also the Optimal Raw Food Diet makes the most common sense.

I simply use facts and studies to help to convince you that what I'm saying makes sense. In the end, you'll know simply by trying it and seeing for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Do your own experimentation and research.

This book, "The pH Miracle" isn't even a raw food book. So why would anyone want to base a raw food diet on this book? This book will make it very hard for you to stay raw and to do so in a healthy manner because it will scare you from eating most fruit. But it does so with incorrect information.

How could this book be so good if this author doesn't understand the hundreds of thousands of toxins that are created in the cooking process? Toxins, carcinogens, and mutagens have been proven by science to be created by the cooking process. Even steaming does horrible damage to food. Seems to me his knowledge is a bit lacking.

I do believe there is quite a bit of valuable information in this book, but you have to weed out the inaccurate information from the good information. This therefore leads to confusion and therefore failure with the raw food diet.

Someone who doesn't have a deep background in nutritional science won't be able to detect the truth from the fiction. This is even true of many of the so-called raw food gurus who support this book.

great to hear from you as well… My belief is that the banana is a very sick plant and it is not natural. it is man made beside it is full of sugar witch is very acidic.

Thanks for your explanation. But I think you have the facts wrong about bananas. Bananas are indeed natural. The bananas that we get in the stores have not been hybridized by man. In fact, it is rare for any American's to have even eaten a banana that has been hybridized by man.

Bananas are one of a number of plants that can grow with seeds or without seeds in the wild. Papayas and other tropical fruit also can grow wild without seeds.

I have confirmation from at least three different people who have seen seedless bananas growing wild (no farms, just in nature). One of them mentioned seeing seedless bananas growing wild on the side of the road somewhere in Florida.

Bananas have a special genetic system which is called triploid genetics. It allows them to easily go seedless and back to seeded naturally and without interference from man. They do so on their own and it is naturally a part of their design.

As for acidity. I eat lots of bananas on a daily basis (sometimes 20 or more) and yet I have alkaline readings when I do pH tests.

Here's another surprising fact. Did you know that you can actually become too alkaline?

Here are signs of excess alkalinity: from Conscious Eating, pg 60

* Anxiety & excitability, overexcitability of central nervous system * Muscle spasm, tetany, low tolerance of physical stimulation, muscle tension * Slow injury recovery, physical adjustments don't hold well * Muscle pain

The key is a balance. The alkalinity of the human blood is only very slightly to the alkaline side. 0 to 14 is the pH scale and we should be between 7.35 and 7.45 pH. The alkaline range starts at 7.

The pH balance of your blood is determined by many other factors besides diet. Breathing, emotions, stress levels and exercise are just a few of the other multiple components that affect blood pH levels.

Bananas are actually a super nutritious food in terms of many major nutrients we need. They are high 'as you said' in sugar (a vital human NUTRIENT by the way), which is by far the highest need we have out of all the nutrients except for air and water. Bananas are also high in water by the way.

Bananas are the number one food of top athletes around the world. I saw so many tennis players eating bananas between changeovers at this year's US Open. Maybe these professional athletes are on to something.

Bananas High In These Other Vital Nutrients As Well:

Potassium (You knew that) Fiber B6 (High in all the B vitamins except B12) Iron, Magnesium, a complete protein food (contains all 8 essential amino acids) Manganese Vitamin C Folate

Next, the perfect fuel for the human body is actually carbohydrate in the form of simple sugars. It burns the most cleanly and every cell in the body runs on sugar (not on fat or protein which also contain calories).

So sugar "by itself" may indeed be acidic, however when you are eating fruit, you are not only eating sugar, you are eating all the vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytonutrients, etc. associated with the fruit.

To label sugar as an evil is a silly notion because it is the primary fuel of the body and brain. It's another example of science looking at just one factor of the food 'the sugar content' and then making the wrong conclusions from that.

Sugar is the most important macro-nutrient. We need much more sugar or carbohydrate by far than protein or fat. Even if you don't eat sugar, the body will convert the fat and the protein that you do eat into sugar via gluconeogenesis.

Bananas are loaded with fiber and even contain 'guar gum' which is a fiber given to diabetics to lower their blood sugar levels. Heaven forbid you should feed the diabetic the whole food the guar gum came from.

Bananas and fruits in general naturally contain the fibers and nutrients to help slow the absorption of sugar. Nature knows what it's doing.

Plus, you can never get rid of sugar from your body. You always have blood sugar and must always have it in order to run your body. If it goes too low or too high, you will die.

Strokes: According to research in "The New England Journal of Medicine," eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%.

Now here's something else to consider. According to nutritional anthropology all throughout human history, humans have eaten a low fat, high carb (or high sugar) and mostly raw food diet. It wasn't even possible until the last 10,000 years or so with the advent of agriculture to eat a high fat diet in most parts of the world. Even most wild animals are only about 3% body fat.

The reason I bring this up is because many of the raw food diets out there recommend an ultra high fat diet and claim that is natural and what humans have been eating since the beginning of their existence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Before agriculture we didn't have oil, we didn't have shelled nuts. All humans were nomadic until agriculture changed all of that. Humans traveled in small groups of 35 to 50 people and defended a territory of about 200 miles. Almost every day they had to get up and travel to a new location in order to secure enough food.

Finally, what do our closest animal relatives eat? Our closest relative in terms of similar DNA and digestive system are the Pygmy Chimps otherwise known as the Bonobos. They are even more intelligent than chimpanzees which are our second closest genetic relative. (Humans are considered to be primates as well.) The next closest animal to us is the Orangutan.

All of these animals eat a low fat and high fruit diet. They also eat greens. The smarter the great ape is, the more fruit it actually eats. So if you believe that fruit is so bad for our health, then why is it the preferred food of our closest genetic relatives?

Eating fruit doesn't cause them to have cancer, it doesn't cause them to become diabetic, it doesn't give them a candida overgrowth.

Why do they all eat a super low fat and high fruit diet? Why do some raw foodists eat a high fat, raw diet and think it is natural? Minus eating coconuts all day long or being Eskimos, early humans never ate a high fat diet.

The Eskimos by the way, were not living in a natural human environment and they had exceptionally poor health including a life expectancy of 39 years and the worst osteoporosis on the planet.

The problem we have here is a lack of seeing the complete picture. Science is good at doing that. Look at a part of the equation, which is the truth from that perspective, but when you look at the whole picture that truth no longer makes sense.

Our ideal natural diet would be obtained by living in the tropics and gathering the wild foods ourselves. Our second best option is to eat the raw and organic fruits we have available to us and to balance out the fruit eating, by eating a lot in terms of leafy greens and green vegetables.

Stuff like celery, cucumber, and all sorts of lettuces will completely balance out the nutrient profile and give us an abundant supply of virtually all the minerals and nutrients we need.

P.S. If you'd like expert coaching and support at succeeding with the raw food diet at a dirt-cheap price, then come on over and take a look at what my website has to offer you.

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