Dr. Doug Graham (80-10-10 raw vegan)

[Aractus]

So why do they think this is a healthy diet, when it obviously isn't?

Well it's because long-term it's very difficult to gain weight on such a diet.

80% - carbohydrate.
10% - protein.
10% - fat.

Now what happens when you have such a diet is that you create an environment in your body where fat storage cannot take place. But that fact alone doesn't make it healthy. Far from it.

Let's put this in perspective, adipose cells (i.e. fat cells) store fatty lipids. Typically body fat constitutes adipose tissue which is about 87% lipid. On the other hand though, some adipose tissue, e.g. in the organs, contains hardly any lipid.

The human body thrives on a variety of foods including starchy foods and meat. Now let's also think about this in perspective. Starch is made up of glucose molecules bonded together, and we can digest it to get the glucose. On the other hand, fruit contains the more simple sugars - fructose and glucose. Our bodies don't really have a specific need for fructose, in fact it has to be broken down and ultimately converted into glucose to be of any use. Same thing happens with alcohol. Monkeys including chimps and gorillas can digest these simple sugars, and they thrive on fruit-based diets. They, however, cannot digest starch like we can. We're not monkeys we're quite different, and we thrive on different foods to monkeys.

Ashton Kutcher was hospitalised after going fruitarian for just a month (which he did to get into character) - and Steve Jobs probably got pancreatic cancer from his fruitarian lifestyle.

Fruit based diets (or for that matter most vegan diets) are deficient in calcium, protein, iron, zinc, vitamin D, most B vitamins, and essential fatty acids.

Vitamin D for instance, people think they get it from the sun. We do not - the skin does carry out the first phase in Vitamin D synthesis using ultraviolet light, that's true, but that is later completed by the liver and kidneys. About 1/3rd of Australians have Vitamin D deficiency - because we're not supposed to get all our Vitamin D from synthesising UV light, we need dietary Vitamin D from milk, fish or mushrooms. You cannot get it from fruit.

B12 is another obvious example, and the reason why raw-vegans typically take IV B12. But, there are reasons to believe that injecting B12 does not work for everyone.

But it's the essential fatty acid deficiency that causes one's body to be unable to store more fat. The reason is simple - and there can be dire consequences as well. Take 10% fat in your 80-10-10 diet. We'll assume that it's roughly 80% unsaturated fat since it's coming from fruits. This can lead to a serious cholesterol deficiency since it is a particular type of saturated fat that stimulates the body to produce cholesterol, and you're supposed to get about 15% of your cholesterol from your diet but plant-based foods have no cholesterol at all. Cholesterol is the precursor to every steroid - so low cholesterol leads to low hormone levels, and can result in chronic fatigue, clinical depression, psychosis, and other serious mental illnesses. High blood cholesterol, as I just mentioned, is due to having a high amount of saturated fat in the diet and can be easily lowered. It is very difficult to raise cholesterol using vegan-friendly foods, and impossible on a fruit based diet.

So you're eating maybe 80% unsaturated fat, and 20% saturated fat with fat comprising 10% of your calories. So in total, 4% of your calories can be directly converted to lipids. This of course could lead to low triglyceride levels, again very serious, if the lipids were to be stored as fat. The remaining 6% which is unsaturated fat, can also be converted so long as half is first converted to saturated fat - a process which burns further calories - but let's assume, since I don't have the numbers, that process will result in a further number of triglycerides which will replenish the ones that were first made when you had your fruit-based meal - okay still with me?

There's not enough lipids to spare for storage in adipose cells, so you cannot put on weight. Again, this assumes you've been following the diet for maybe 6-9 months or longer and have allowed serious dietary deficiencies to develop. What actually does happen to people who first start the diet is they put on weight for the first few months while they're building those deficiencies.

Okay, so if you're still with me, now we have another problem. You're flooding your body with far more glucose than it wants. And what happens when you eat too much glucose? That's right - you release the insulin hormone to tell your liver to flush it out of your blood; which it does. Where does it go? Well it's converted to glycogen. Your body can store only around 2,000 kcal in glycogen.

So what happens when the glycogen stores are full? Aha - usually, the body would instead use the glucose to synthesis fatty lipids; but you don't have enough fat in your diet to make any more lipids. And you can't make lipids without dietary unsaturated fats. So now, there's nowhere for it to go. What happens to it then? To be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% sure how it is removed, but in any case, the body removes it from your system without burning all the Calories, because it can't store it. Quite possibly it will end up in the urine (which indicates that you have diabetes). What I do know, however, is that always eating fruit to excess every day and making your pancreas produce and secrete more insulin than normal will eventually lead to type 2 diabetes.

And that's not to mention all the other health problems you'll have from dietary deficiencies including osteoporosis.

Anyway, the proponents of the 80-10-10 diet are not health experts, and that includes Dr. Doug Graham. Yes he's published books - but have you seen him publish in scientific peer-review journals? And then you hear these people claim "well they don't want to know about this stuff because there's no money to be made ..." Are you fucking serious? There's a huge amount of money to be made, especially by exploiting vulnerable people with these nonsense promises! And it would get published if it was scientifically credible.

To put your faith in fringe ideas instead of peer-reviewed science is just stupid. Experts are people who participate in research; and they usually publish academic material either in journals or some other form, they hold academic conferences, etc. People who do none of those things, people who have training, people who may very well be qualified doctors, and people who publish non-academic books and hold non-academic seminars are NOT experts, even if they claim to be.

To think of the damage that is done to people who follow the 80-10-10 diet and other extreme diets is horrendous. Most qualified dieticians will tell you that there is no one diet that is right for everyone, and especially not extreme diets.

Woodstock Fruit Festival banned Dr. Graham because otherwise it would reflect badly upon their event: just search for the other people who go there and who have had health problems: DTM liferegenrator, jolita brilliant, etc, not to mention other vegans who've also experienced health problems long term and have spoken about it (trollsneedhugs, alex jamieson, etc). Eating nothing but sugary fruits will give you regular sugar-highs and it'll become addictive and you'll literally be chasing the dragon. Fructose is addictive.