Hello all,

FWIW I use dietary strategies in my daily practice as a clinician and
from my experience a diet high in carbohydrates, whether from cereals
and grains OR fruits ends up having the same effect in promoting
insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia.  Fruit has certainly always
been an important part of the human diet but with two important caveats:

1) fruit was only consumed in limited amounts during specific periods
of time, at least in temperate populations.  In my part the world for
e.g., in Alberta, Canada, good luck to you to try to grow any kind of
fruit at all, and if you do, the season is extremely short;
2) most fruit available today is the modern hybridized version of
ancestral fruits, the latter of which have an overall higher fiber
content and usually more seeds, containing additional sources of
proteins and fats (e.g. the Saskatoon or Serviceberry [Amelanchier
alnifolia], that despite being an important food for First Nations and
early pioneers, most modern folks find them too mealy). This latter
point also applies to the modern hybrized versions of many vegetables,
e.g. the carrot (Daucus carota), which bears little similarity to the
sweet,  fleshy orangey-pink version of today

as for eating raw foods, I think it might be interesting to note that
in the ancient systems of medicine, including Ayurveda and TCM, raw
foods are avoided because they are considered to be difficult to
digest.  This perspective is certainly borne out in my clinical
experience, in which I will emphasize a diet rich in quality animal
proteins along with above-ground steamed vegetables, and when patients
follow this, I can almost always suspend any additional therapy.
Despite Gandhi's admonishment for folks to "chew their juice and juice
their food," most modern folk don't chew their food all that well,
reducing to a substrate that can then be acted upon by chemical means,
and given the lack of cellulase produced in the human GIT, all those
crunchy raw foods pretty much pass through the GIT undigested, and are
at best a source of prebiotics.


On Thursday, August 21, 2003, at 06:16  PM, Bob Avery wrote:

> Tamsin,
>
>> Until the message is clear that most
> people will never be able just to eat as much as they want and stay as
> thin as they like, then the growing trend of increasing obesity will
> continue
>
> If one eats only uncooked fruits and veggies, one can accomplish just
> that.  It's been proven over and over.  You will probably even get
> thinner than you like!  (:-)
>
> Bob Avery
>
> ________________________________________________________________
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Todd Caldecott, Cl.H., AHG
Clinical Herbalist
Wild Rose Clinic
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Director of Clinical Herbal Studies
Wild Rose College of Natural Healing
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400 - 1228 Kensington Rd. NW
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fax: (403) 283-0799
email: [log in to unmask]
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