Fruits, Seeds, Nuts & Fruit Eaters

Writings of the Late Dr. T.C. Fry:

What is a Fruit?

Fruits are that part of a seed package created by tree, stalk or vine to attract consumption by a biological symbiont for the purpose of distributing its seeds, thus insuring procreation of kind. Fruit is the only form of plant life grown specifically as food.

Fruits that are rarely mentioned as fruits are melons—that is, cantaloupes, honeydews, muskmelons and watermelons. Pumpkins and any seed-bearing package which ripens usually have a food complement to attract consumption with the incidental benefit of the discarding of the seeds away from the parent plants.

Fruits are really the mesocarps of seed packages which plants created specifically as a product to be consumed by a biological symbiont who would incidentally discard and distribute the seeds. As our senses reveal, the fruit mesocarps were specifically compounded to attract biological symbionts.

What are Seeds and Nuts?

Nuts and seeds were created by plants for broadcast and reproduction by other methods. All nuts are seeds.

Most seeds are in a storage form to survive the vagaries of climatic and consuming elements so that they may be instrumental in reproducing and perpetuating their kind. Nuts, however, have extra protection in that they have hard woody shells. Seeds usually have only fibrous coatings as their protection. Both seeds and nuts are heavily endowed with nutrients sufficient to initiate and sustain a certain minimum growth of their plants. We can benefit from these nutrients. But if we eat more than 2 or 3 ounces, we’re likely to get more protein and fats than we can readily handle.

Certainly nuts and seeds were not created by plants for consumption but, rather, for reproduction. That some animals have adapted to their consumption has not been a two-sided affair as it has been with fruits where the love affair has been and still is mutual. There are many types of seeds: legumes, grains, weeds, nuts, and fruit seeds being among the most prominent. In their natural state humans can handle very few of these seeds. Nuts can be digested and used in very small amounts. Likewise, sesame, pumpkin, squash, sunflower, pignolias, and some other seeds can be used. We are primarily carbohydrate eaters, not fat and protein eaters.

What is a Frugivore?

Vertebrate animals that are biologically adapted to living mainly on fruits. The primates (human beings, anthropoid apes: gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, etc.) are frugivores. Unlike carnivores, frugivores have millions of pores for sweating to keep cool while picking and eating fruits during the sunny days. They also have molars to grind and chew their food, and their intestinal tract is 12 times the length of their bodies for absorption of nutrients from fruits. Frugivores have well-developed salivary glands for secretion of the starchsplitting enzyme, ptyalin; but the secrete only 10 percent as much hydrochloric acid as carnivores.

Physiologically and anatomically, frugivores are equipped for living mainly on fruits and are not equipped for eating meats, or for obtaining energy from the cellulose of grasses, leaves or herbs. Animals or humans who live on fruits. For our purposes anyone who lives predominantly or mostly on fruits. There are total fruitarians but they comprise only a fraction of the fruitarians.

What is a Fruitarian?

A fruitarian is a person who lives mainly or exclusively upon fruits, the class of foods that we humans are biologically adapted to eating. Humans are biologically fruitarians. Our physiology confirms that fruit is our ideal food, and it should comprise the majority of our diet.

Some fruitarians may include a certain amount of vegetable matter in their diets; others may include nuts and/or seeds and yet others may include vegetables and nuts but eat a preponderance of fruits. Certain fruits such as cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, etc., are commonly referred to as vegetables. Some fruitarians include these in their diet; others do not.

With uncanny intelligence, fruits were created by plant life to meet the exact nutrient needs of their biological symbionts—nectar for bees would be a good example. When ripened, fruits accommodatingly convert their carbohydrate components into glucose and fructose, simple sugars we can use without further digestion. Their enzymes convert their proteins into amino acids and their fats into fatty acids and glycerols.

The fruit portions, that is, mesocarps, were specifically compounded to attract biological symbionts. Fruits meet our nutrient needs rather ideally with predigested nutrients. For humans, no other food compares with fruits in satisfying all needs including, of course, our requirement for delicious soul-exalting fare. When we eat fruits, all we need do is savor their goodness.