In lecturing about nutrition and fasting, I have talked to many people who eat a raw food diet, often for a period of from one to three years. They speak very highly of their experiences and especially how healthy and alive they feel. The raw foods diet is really the “living food” diet. It definitely goes against the flow of the Western dietary tradition, but it is something to try for those with an adventurous spirit who want to lighten up and cleanse themselves on deeper levels. Many of the same concerns must be watched for as on the vegan diet.

Natural Hygiene
The “natural hygiene” diet is not a New Age fad, but an ancient system of a raw foods diet supported by cleansing the colon and occasional fasting. This program and philosophy began with the Essenes, an ancient tribe of Jewish scholars. They believed in preparation for the “messiah” via detoxification of their bodies, minds, and spirits through clean living and keeping the body free of waste. This pure diet and evolved lifestyle is written about in the Essene Gospel of Peace by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely and in other texts.

The natural hygiene diet was repopularized in the 1930s in Germany, and has had its followers in Europe and America since that time. Aspects of it have been discussed as part of the Fit for Life book by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. I will review more of the Essenes concepts and practices of natural hygiene in the last part of this book in the Detoxification, Fasting, and Immortality programs.

Fruitarian
There are some people who attempt to subsist solely on nature’s true gift of nourishment—fruits. However, fruits do not contain all the nutrients that human beings need to live, at least not on a long-term basis. Protein content is very low, and many of the B vitamins, iron, calcium, magnesium, and other minerals are scarce in fruits. They are also deficient in fats, though if the seeds of the fruits are eaten, the essential fatty acids, the only fats that are truly needed, can be obtained.

Overall, a fruitarian diet is a limited one and it is generally considered poor nutrition. It can be invigorating and purifying on a short-term basis, a couple of weeks at the most; staying on such a diet any longer than that could be dangerous.

Fasting
True fasting is consuming only water—and air, of course. This provides a strong inner experience; I believe that it should be done only under certain circumstances and ideally with the guidance and supervision of a physician or experienced nutritionist. However, a surprising number of people have done water fasting successfully for short periods of time on their own. It is undertaken basically as a detoxification-cleansing-purifying process. It is not really a diet, since it provides no nutrients.

Juice fasting is more common, provides more nutrients, and can be undertaken for a much longer period than water fasting, but it is still deficient in total nutrition. Drinking only fruit and vegetable juices can be done for several Day s, a week or two, or even longer; the longer fasting is done, the more problems (called “cleansing reactions” by those experiencing them) and deficiencies may be experienced. I have known people who have fasted for longer than two months and have personally monitored some patients through thirty-Day fasts, most often on the “Master Cleanser,” or lemonade, diet. This fast and others, as well as the how-to’s of fasting, are discussed in many books on the subject, including my first one, Staying Healthy With the Seasons. It will also be discussed in Chapter 18 of this book, entitled Detoxification and Healing Programs. The fasting process is best used as a means of transformation to enhance the potential for change in habits and lifestyle during the reevaluation, detoxification period. Weight is usually lost during the process, though I do not suggest fasting as a weight-loss diet. I do feel that it is one of the best natural therapeutic tools available to the healing arts, given the right situation. Resting from foods and letting the body process what is already stored is the perfect balance to our typical excessive and congesting way of eating. (Body-organ-cell congestion comes from eating more fat and protein foods than we need.) I have called fasting, or the cleansing process, the “missing link in the American diet.”