In life, we often go about our days believing something about ourselves or our world that is entirely false. Once corrected, this knowledge can significantly change our lives for the better. Becoming aware of our erroneous beliefs is an important responsibility of ours: not only does it affect what you create and attract in your life, but it also affects others around you. Our beliefs aren’t just a set of statements confined in our heads. Instead, they are like invisible forces emitting out to the world around you at every moment. The more I became aware of the false beliefs behind my thoughts, feelings, and actions, the more opportunity I had to change them.
Imagine you don’t know that snow melts and evaporates. How would this look in the winter? You would not only shovel snow off your driveway, but off your lawn, roof, and top of your car too. You may even create a mound of all the snow right at the curb in hopes that the garbage men do something about it. Every time it snows you repeat this process and accept it as a necessary maintenance routine. “Thank man for shovels, what would we do without them?” you’d think.
Imagine thinking that plants require Gatorade for hydration. “Time to drink!” you lovingly say to your backyard flowers while you splash orange Gatorade around their stems and over their petals. Every time you enter the yard, you notice the flowers becoming more dull. Petals are falling day by day. You believe nothing is wrong with this process, that “that’s just how flower life is”. Once the flowers die you buy more to maintain a beautiful backyard appearance.
Today the belief that humans are omnivores or carnivores still exists. Believers are continuously eating inappropriate foods and experiencing a myriad of negative effects physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They are going about their life misinterpreting these degenerative signs as “normal”, thinking that their experience is healthy. There is a constant bombardment of misinformation regarding our biological diet from the internet, our government, so-called “experts”, grocery stores and restaurants, TV shows, and more. Everyone around us is doing it, so clearly nothing is harmful about this practice, many of us think. In this article, I share the evident anatomical, physiological, sensorial, and psychological ways humans are designed as frugivores.
Anatomy and physiology
Posture – Our upright, bipedal postures allow us to pick fruit from low branches of fruit trees. An upright posture suggests that we, unlike herbivores, are not meant to continuously graze on low-growing plants such as grasses, tubers, or root vegetables. It also suggests that, unlike carnivores, we are not meant to keep a close predator eye on smaller animals hiding in bushes or behind tree trunks.
Hands – Humans have fingers for picking, peeling, and tearing the fruits and tender leaves we eat. Carnivores have claws made to dig into the flesh of their prey. Omnivores can have claws, paws, or hoofs designed for easy handling of their appropriate foods.
Teeth – Our teeth set most closely match that of a chimpanzee, with flat incisors and molars and shorter canine teeth compared to omnivorous and carnivorous animals. Our teeth are designed to gently tear through the soft and ripe skin of fruit or tender greens and chew them thoroughly before swallowing. The teeth of carnivores and omnivores are designed to rip through the protein- and fat-rich muscular tissue an animal. For carnivores, their lack of salivary digestive enzymes means that digestion does not start in the mouth as it does for frugivores. Carnivores swallow their food without chewing. We would not have been given a set of teeth to chew our food if our proper diet didn’t require using them.
Jaws—Like herbivores, our jaws have easy forward and lateral mobility, which is necessary to thoroughly chew the fruits and softly grind the tender greens that make up our diet. Carnivores have no forward or lateral mobility, and omnivores have very little, since they both do not need to chew their food.
Saliva – Our saliva is alkaline, having a pH greater than 7. Acidic saliva, having a pH less than 7, is seen in omnivores and carnivores who need it to break down their higher acidic diet. If a human has chronic acidic saliva, this leads to tooth cavities and sensitivity, inflamed gums, and sore throats. We secrete only one starch-breaking enzyme, called amylase, whereas actual grain-eating animals contain multiple salivary enzymes to handle their starch-heavy diet. Carnivores contain no amount of salivary amylase. The dominant sugar in a frugivore’s diet is fructose. Already in a simple form, fructose doesn’t require amylase to break down.
Stomach acid – Humans, other frugivores, and herbivores contain weak hydrochloric acid levels as the carbohydrate-rich diet doesn’t require much acid to break down. Carnivores and omnivores contain higher hydrocholic acid levels because their fat- and protein-rich diets require a highly acidic environment to break down these materials.
Intestinal length – Frugivores and herbivores have longer intestinal lengths than omnivores and carnivores, with carnivores having the shortest length. The cellulose-rich plant materials of frugivorous and predominantly of herbivorous diets require an extended digestive time, hence the longer intestinal length. Many herbivores additionally contain more than one stomach chamber to further aid in the breakdown of cellulose. Carnivores have the shortest intestinal length because decomposing meat contains toxins that can make even a carnivore sick if not eliminated within a short period. Their shorter intestinal length allows for the prompt exiting of the rotting meat.
Large intestine/Colon shape – Our large intestines have a sacculated shape, containing small sac-like sections. This shape allows for controlled absorption and movement along the tract. On the other hand, the colons of carnivores and omnivores are smooth, not sacculated. The raw and spoiling meat calls for a smooth colon for quicker movement and minimal absorption.
Senses
In our natural tropical environment, we’d walk barefoot among the tall trees, shorter plants, many animals, and tiny insects. We’d notice the sea of green, various shades of the color dominating our view ahead. A constant symphony of birds, frogs, monkeys, and cicadas would enter our ears. Our sight would help us identify our food as we’d see the bright colors of ripe fruit stand out in bushes or hanging from green-leafed branches. Our sense of smell would attract us to our food, as the sweet smell of fruit is universally loved by humans. It also helps in our search that most fruits emit a pleasant odor only when they’re ready to eat.
Nothing in our sensory experience suggests that humans are meant to eat animals, grains, bitter greens, root vegetables, or tubers. When viewed in nature, none of these are particularly an appealing sight that makes the mouth water. Their colors found in nature don’t stand out to us. They don’t appeal to our sense of smell, especially the rotting carcass of an animal. Their taste in a raw, unspiced, unsalted state and undrenched in oils or syrups is nothing close to the pleasure of eating fruit.
Psychology
Humans have no innate desire to kill anything in nature, and any desire to kill that arises is learned in childhood from family and environment. Put a rabbit, a bowl of fruit, a bunch of barley grass, and a raw potato in front of a hungry toddler. The toddler will always end up feasting on the fruit.
In nature, we would have no natural desire to pick tubers, cut grains, or kill an animal when perfectly delicious fruit is available. This isn’t only because of their unpleasant tastes, but because doing so requires more labor on our part, unlike picking fruit. The food for a species is easily obtained with its specific set of anatomical features and psychological instincts. No species in nature prefers to expend more energy than necessary to obtain their food. Even carnivores are known to seek out weaker or sicker prey over the vigorous kind. Every animal doesn’t need to go against its instincts to obtain its food. No animal needs tools or machinery to obtain their food. We wouldn’t make a habit of bending down or going on all fours for hours to pull out enough carrots from the ground to get enough calories. We wouldn’t make an effort to rip grains from the ground with our smooth bare hands or waste time chasing down a turkey to eat even though it hurts us inside to do so.
How about gently picking a ripe fig or peach from the tree and enjoying it at that moment, dropping any remaining seed or stem right by your feet? How about finding a ripe watermelon just separated from its vine, only needing a knock on the ground for it to willingly split open? What about encountering a sweet, yellow banana almost asking to be eaten, easily falling from the stalk and showing you where to peel? No strategy or tools are needed. Do any of these experiences feel wrong or laborious, or do they feel light and carefree?
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Of all possible diets, a frugivore diet is the only one that allows the human body to heal itself to the furthest extent possible while still eating. Our biologically designed diet is the only one that allows the body to advance detoxification, eliminating loads of cellular waste and giving way for better absorption and utilization of nutrients to assist in regenerating each cell in our body. Put a person with a list of ailments on a fruit-based diet and, with consistency and discernment, they only see improvement in the end. Only a diet proper to the species delivers excellent and robust health.
2 Questions
There are so many things found in nature that humans mistakenly believe are proper food. Along with animals and their secretions or products, tubers, grains, and most leaves, other examples are herbs, algae, spices, salts, cruciferous vegetables, beans and legumes, and more. Understanding how humans are designed as frugivores helps to clear up most confusion on this or that food. Additionally, two important questions one can ask when wondering if something is proper food for us are:
- Does it taste good in its whole, raw, natural form?
Do parsley, seaweed, broccoli, chickpeas, carrots, or onion taste good in their raw, unaltered form? Some may say these foods do taste good. This opinion only exists as a result of years of poor eating practices that change palates and senses, making us sensorily tolerant to these bland, bitter, and sulfurous foods. The fact that raw onions trigger our body to create tears should indicate to us that it is not food for us. There’s a reason a child, generally having less corrupt taste buds, prefers fruit over these non-foods…they taste good.
- Can you make a meal from it alone?
Can you fill a bowl with turmeric, basil, raw oats, or plantain leaf and consider it a meal? Can you finish eating a bowl of these foods and be satisfied for hours after? No. Can you fill a bowl with blackberries, papaya, or grapes and be satisfied for hours after? Yes!
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While humans have been able to survive eating an omnivorous diet, this doesn’t mean that it is our ideal diet to thrive. We were designed to thrive and this occurs when we change our diet and lifestyle to one in harmony with nature’s design. Correcting false beliefs about our biologically proper diet will only lead to more joy in the future. When we uncomplicate life and get out of our way, we get closer to reaching our full potential of health and vitality.