Twenty years ago I made a profoundly life-changing discovery. I uncovered a wondrous, glittery, and refreshingly REAL treasure at the end of a very long and arduous hunt. I desperately wanted relief from various uncomfortable and debilitating symptoms of dis-ease I had been suffering with for many years, and I wanted to understand what my body was doing, and why. Medical doctors and even alternative healers had mostly been unable to truly help me, so down the rabbit hole I had to go, embarking on a very important and personal quest for answers to my deep questions about how we humans are designed to live, and how we are designed to eat.

I first became a voracious reader of books and magazines on health and nutrition since I was suffering with digestive issues, and I encountered an enormous library of conflicting information about diet. Could it really be, I wondered, that we are not intelligent enough to figure out what humans are actually designed to eat? Every other kind of creature on our planet eats a simple, species-specific diet that researchers and scientists have been able to clearly identify - why then wouldn’t this concept apply also to our human species? I got deeply curious about this! There was so much to ponder…it’s a fact that humans long ago wandered away from our original natural habitat in the equatorial tropics, that we are more advanced in certain ways than other animal species, and that we have developed some regional distinctions. This could explain the wide variances in what humans choose to eat, but could it really alter our natural design? I kept studying.

I experimented with several different approaches to my own food choices - from no red meat, to vegetarian, to vegan, to macrobiotic, to Ayurvedic, to low-fat and oil-free. I learned a lot through self-observation, and I did experience some health upgrades along the way. Invariably though, the benefits would plateau or even decrease over time, and I was haunted by an intuitive sense that I was still missing a key piece of this puzzle. I was young (in my 20’s and 30’s), and I believed that I ought to be able to consistently maintain the vibrant energy and symptom-free health I took for granted as a child.

Then one evening, while enjoying a gigantic personal salad I had brought to a communal dinner, in the intentional co-housing community where I lived with my husband and children at the time, a friend who had been noticing my large salads offered me a book about an uncooked, fresh fruit and vegetable diet. I stayed up all night reading that book! For me, at that moment, it was a real page-turner - like an exciting mystery novel that I just knew held the key I’d been searching nearly twenty years for! I am still amazed by how long it took for me to see this most basic information.

I was so primed for this information by the time that one book made it into my hands, that in the morning I called a phone number in the back of the book and hired a personal coach, on the spot! I wholeheartedly began my raw vegan journey that day, and I have never even considered turning back. The positive changes in my body, mind and spirit were immediate, and then sustained. Over the next eighteen months I connected with many others who had also stumbled upon this precious and seemingly nearly lost ancient wisdom, and I continued to learn and to refine my holistic health program.

Did you know that your adult sweet-tooth is naturally still strong, and is meant to be fully indulged? Why else would it be there, and with the perfect satiation for it provided freely and naturally to us? If you indulge your innate sweet-tooth (with the right things, of course), your body will step up its daily cleansing operations and you can get on a fast-track to vibrant, lasting health! The ultimate gem that was revealed to me is that fresh, ripe, whole FRUIT is the ‘obvious secret’ to curing most of our health problems, and even many or most of our planetary ills.

‘Obvious,’ because when you really think about it, fruit is the only food freely given to us by nature which easily attracts our attention and satiates our appetite. In fact, I began to fully realize our powerful symbiotic relationship with fruit. The fruit relies on healthy fruit-eaters to be able to spread its seed far and wide. And we depend on the fruit as our highest source of fuel and nutrition, easily and efficiently digested and assimilated by us to insure our natural vitality.

‘Secret,’ because this basic truth is mostly hidden from view in our industrialized, high-tech, medicalized modern society which pushes processed and packaged grocery-store food-stuffs, and pseudo-supplements. As crazy as it seems to me, I am labeled ‘radical’ and ‘extreme’ for my choice to mostly eat only the foods which my human body is naturally designed to consume. Would you dare to put the wrong kind of fuel into your car over and over again, and expect good results?

It's a shame that fresh fruit often gets lumped in with refined sugars as "too much sugar." The human body can digest and utilize fruits better and more easily than it can any other food naturally on this planet. Our cells run best on glucose, and its most effective and efficient delivery vehicle is fresh sweet fruit. Everything else then seems to me to be second-rate food, when we’re talking about humans. Leafy greens & vegetables, and nuts & seeds, are nutritious natural accompaniments to fruit, but if we had to live on only one category of food, the only one with which we could hope to singularly sustain personal and planetary health is.......FRESH, SWEET FRUIT!

I discovered that animal products, grains, and legumes are not a part of our ideal human food. All of these require processing (which damages them) to render them humanly edible and/or appetizing, and even then they are relatively difficult for us to digest fully. They are acid-forming, and thus mucous-forming and disease-promoting in our bodies. A good 4-step test of our preferred native foods is: 1. Does it grow in nature? 2. Does it attract our attention as it’s growing? 3. Does it taste delicious ‘as-is,’ with no processing? 4. Can we make a meal of it, in its ‘as-is’ natural state?

Clearly we can survive on foods outside of our preferred species-native foods, at least for a while, but we cannot expect the same potential to thrive. Fruit digests cleanly and easily, and leaves us with plenty of energy for living life to the fullest. Fruit is loaded with vitamins and minerals, water and oxygen, antioxidants, simple and efficient carbohydrate fuel, gently cleansing soluble fiber, and more. And fruit promotes an alkaline body pH, giving us a disease-resistant inner terrain. Our bodies thank us when we eat a meal of fresh fruit. And when taken mindfully, it becomes a delightful experience, as well as spiritually satisfying as it helps us to know our right relationship with nature.

Could it be random coincidence that the incredible variety of exquisitely beautiful, brightly colored juicy fresh fruit attracts all of our senses, and best satisfies our unrelenting sweet-tooth? Does it make any sense at all that our access to this sweet, satiating, pure nectar should be restricted? To me, it makes much more sense that Mother Nature is generously, lovingly offering us a gift of vitality and longevity. When we are healthy, the things that are good for us feel good to do! I believe life is meant to be sweet.

Reconnecting with the ancient wisdom of a fruitarian lifestyle was just the beginning of an amazing, expansive new chapter in my life. In upcoming posts I will share more aspects of this dynamic and multi-faceted journey with you. 2022 marked my 20-year raw vegan milestone, and I am excited and intrigued to find out what may unfold over the next 20 years. I am forever curious about the master-design of life, and I am a bit of an insatiable truth-seeker. As the tragedy of confusion in our very complex modern world is increasingly revealed, and a growing collective dependence on dubious authority figures and public institutions which have shown their lack of integrity, I find deep and sustaining comfort in my direct personal experience with timeless, basic natural laws.

I will continue to respect Mother Nature’s loving and deeply inspiring guidance, knowing that she offers me a direct portal to the love-wisdom and eternal light of God (please insert what you prefer to call the grand intelligence/higher power/frequency of divine love). In these crazy times, when much of our world seems to have turned upside down and inside out, and so many people behave as if they have lost their way, I choose to follow nature home.

For more specific guidance about a raw vegan diet, please see my handbook titled, The Ultimate Raw Vegan Diet Detox and Wellness Program, available at my website EllenLivingston.com

Living Heart with Ellen Livingston

The Sweet Truth About Sweet Fruit