Recently I’ve been doing some reading on the proposed benefits of eating mono meals.
If you don’t know what mono meals are they are basically a type of meal where only 1 type of food is eaten.
For instance, a meal could consist of several apples. Another meal could be 4 bananas. And so forth.
As you can probably tell, mono meals are heavily promoted by fruitarians – those who eat almost exclusively fruit – as a means of bettering digestion, absorption of nutrients, and overall good health.
Fruitarianism and mono meals are also a fairly substantial component of the “natural hygiene” approach to foods and healthy living.
Blood Sugar Concerns?
I’ve just started to experiment with eating only one type of food at a time. To me it goes against everything I’ve learned about stabilizing blood sugar.
We’ve heard it all before…
Eat a protein and healthy fat with all your meals to slowdown the blood sugar response.
Yet, this very recommendation goes against most food combining principles which tell you to avoid combining heavy proteins and starchy carbs.
It’s no wonder the world of nutrition is a very confusing place. Even I’m perplexed.
Sure I’ve got my own views, but they are not set in stone and they are constantly evolving as I learn and experiment to find out what suits my body the best.
After all, the most important thing is find a way of eating that suits your body. No one approach can suit all people all the time.
Back to the blood sugar issue…
As I write this post, I’m sipping on a banana and date smoothie which you’d think would send me blood sugar through the roof.
And that’s one of the concerns I initially had with having more than 80% of your diet come from fruit and most of your meals as single food items.
But for me, it hasn’t really affected my blood sugar. I don’t feel the up and down roller coaster that comes with eating high sugar foods like donuts and refined garbage.
Furthermore, more and more authorities that I’m learning from have moved from a traditional raw food diet to one that is more fruit-centric.
Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to become a fruitarian but I’m going to keep a close eye on how eating mono meals, and predominantly fruit, affects my digestion and overall vitality.
If you have any experience with mono means and fruitarianism I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’ll keep you posted on my experiments.
Dr. Doug Graham’s The 80/10/10 diet book supports this idea of mono meals. For example – one of his sample meals for breakfast is just half a watermelon – blended as a drink or eaten with a spoon. I also remember seeing just a meal of blended red seedless grapes, and you would drink it for lunch or breakfast!
I would definitely check out Dr. Doug’s book for more info on the benefits of consuming mostly fruits and leafy greens on a low fat raw vegan diet. I read the book this past week and I feel like I’ve FINALLY found the eating plan that I’ve been looking for after all these years of yo-yo dieting!
I can understand the whole vitality stuff when you have a lot of fruits in your diet, mostly because of the natural antioxidants which can not be recreated in a pill or supplement form. But I completely disagree with someone who is not diabetic commenting on their sugars not peaking after a meal. Have you heard of the pancreas! Your pancreas secretes insulin to meet the carbohydrate/sugars digested and absorbed from your meals. In a non-diabetic person, the sugar in your blood should not vary much, so you would not feel ups and downs. Now if you have diabetes which is a growing chronic health problem, no fruit diet is going to preven highs or lows. In fact the sugars from fruits are slower absorbed than those from (glucose)sugar added drinks; but faster absorbed than the carbohydrate found in bread and grain products. It is normal to use the “anti-food combining” approach to better control the elevation in blood glucose; a high blood sugar over the course of time is a cause for the devastating secondary effects of diabetes: microvascular, macrovascular, neurologic, cardiac, renal imparements. So we health professionals will continue to support the carb+protein+fat at meals, and carb or carb + either protein or fat at snacks. To know more about diabetes and dietary management speak to a dietitian, you can also use dial-a-dietitian or your provicial dietetic regulatory body to locate a private practitioner.
I agree with you Laura that diabetics would have a tough time following a mono meal diet. I certainly wouldn’t advise them to do so. However, in a healthy person I’m beginning to debate whether we should even advise combining complex carbs, proteins, and fats in the same meal. Sure they slow down blood sugar into the blood but at what cost…poorer digestion? Fatigue?
The world of nutrition is so complex and I feel it’s important to present different points of view so that each individual can find what works best for them. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Hi, I think you might find this study interesting and relevant, http://www.nutritionj.com/content/10/1/59/abstract
Conclusion: The results show low glycemic indices for the five types of dates included in the study and that their consumption by diabetic individuals does not result in significant postprandial glucose excursions. These findings point to the potential benefits of dates for diabetic subjects when used in a healthy balanced diet.
For awhile now, I’ve thought “no one becomes diabetic from eating too much fruit, its the unnatural, processed sugars from junk food” and I do believe this to be evidence to support that! I think its important to remember, there are multiple kinds of every nutrient. Not all carbs, protein, or fat are created equal. People say “good fat” and “bad fat” nowadays, and the same applies to other nutrients. Also, ratios and combinations come into play, I once read that processed sugar has all its nutritional value stripped out of it, I imagine the artificial alteration of any natural substance before taken into the body would result in a negative reaction.
Upon reading this post I often remember eating on the run with only one product(fruit) and wondering how my body was doing. If I found my energy to be sustained I felt great, if not I blame the product(poor choice).We all are different. If you stop, on the go and get a chocolate bar and coke, how are you suppose to feel? Give me two apples any day.
Thanks for the idea Yuri.
Pierre
Thee Quest Perfect Health
nice advice and sharing,I will buy one good apple for me .thanks,Joe
The 80/10/10 book by Doug Graham made the most sense to me. The answer to diabetes is on pages 39 to 43. The solution is not to starve your body of fuel. That’s a starvation diet. The overconsumption of fat causes blood-sugar problems. The fat coats the insulin, the sugar, the walls of the blood vessels, and the sugar is trapped. The solution is to keep the fat below 10% of your calories. There is fat in fruits and vegetables, and it’s less than 10%.
Doug Graham wrote on page 42:
“Without exception, the use of a low-fat raw vegan diet predominated by sweet fruit has resulted in stabilization of blood-sugar metabolism. Most of my clients were able to completely eliminate their need for insulin and other related drugs within a few weeks or less. No one was ever harmed, and I have never seen any negative consequences resulting from these dietary changes.”
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