FRUIT-EATING - ITS BENEFITS AND PROBLEMS
by Dr. Lawrence Wilson
© February 2025, LD Wilson Consultants, Inc.
All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.
Contents
____________________
Most people enjoy eating fruit, and most health authorities recommend it. After all, it is a natural food that contains many nutrients. It is also tasty and convenient because it does not require cooking. Children often like it, and this is a benefit for parents.
However, we find that most fruit is a very harmful food for health and development, especially for children.
VERY SHORT SUMMARY OF PROBLEMS
Fruit is mainly sugar and water, with a small amount of minerals and other nutrients. The potassium and some of the phosphorus fruit contains today is toxic, and the balance of its minerals is not correct.
Fructose found in most fruit is a very harmful sugar that puts on weight, causes AGES, feeds parasites in the body, and contributes to cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Fruit is also much too yin for regular use.
EXCEPTIONS
There are a few fruits that we highly recommend. They seem needed for excellent health and rapid development:
- Blue corn. Corn is a fruit. Some people have difficulty eating corn. However, as one's body heals, we find everyone can eat blue corn. We strongly recommend eating blue corn chips with each meal. Eating cornbread or corn cereal does not work nearly as well. For details, read Blue Corn Chips. This is for children, as well.
- Almonds in the form of almond butter. Almond is a nut, which is a type of fruit. We require two tablespoons of almond butter daily. It is better to eat it in the form of a butter because it is much easier to digest. Later, as one develops, one can just eat whole almonds.
- Olives. We strongly recommend eating several black kalamata or botija olives each week. Children can also eat a little of these.
- Green beans. We recommend eating a green bean with each meal. These are technically a fruit.
This article will not discuss other benefits of fruits because they are in other books and because we find the problems of fruit override the benefits in every case.
II. PROBLEMS WITH EATING FRUIT
This section incorporates our own research findings and that of many others.
Formation of AGES. We wish more doctors would discuss AGES with their patients. AGES stands for advanced glycation end products. They literally age the body and cause heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other serious health conditions.
More AGES form inside the body when a person eats anything containing sugar, which includes most fruit. For details, read AGES.
Yin disease. This is a harmful alteration of the body toward a more yin condition. It is a very serious imbalance in the body. Modern Western medicine does not yet accept it.
Yin is an ancient word in Chinese, Japanese and Hebrew. The English language does not have an equivalent word. It is a physics term that means cold, expanded, too damp, and today it means much more ill.
The word is also used in Macrobiotics. This is a teaching we make use of in many aspects of the development program.
Eating fruit is one of the worst ways to upset the balance of the basic physical forces in the body that in older books are called yin and yang.
Symptoms usually include a feeling of malaise or weakness, often coupled with many of the symptoms mentioned above. For details, read Yin Disease.
Low in etheric energy. All foods contain some of a special substance that some call the ether. It is found throughout the universe and necessary for life.
Fruit tends to be very low in this substance. It has mainly to do with the mineral content of the food. Fruit is very low in this energy.
Low in souls. Fruit is relatively low in souls. Vegetables, meats, dairy products contain many more souls. This is an unusual topic, but an important one. For more details about souls, read Soul Science.
The toxic potassium problem. An unusual and awful situation today is that basically ALL FOOD, including organic food, is grown using N-P-K or superphosphate fertilizers. These are chemicals that are really growth stimulants.
Some health authorities think this is acceptable because it allows farmers to grow more food per acre. However, it causes several problems.
First, the food is much lower in many nutrients because more is grown on the same acreage. Even worse, the potassium in these chemicals has a subtle toxicity. It is highly irritating to the body.
Most fruit picks up a lot of toxic potassium, more than any other food. As a result, it makes most fruit a very harmful food. The fruit we recommend – blue corn chips, olives and some green beans – pick up less of this toxin, but they still pick up some. For details, read Toxic Potassium and Superphosphates.
Fruit moves subtle energy in an outward and upward direction. This is another subtle problem with most fruit. However, it is extremely important.
Our bodies are polarized. Downward moving energy is healthy and life-giving, while upward moving energy and outward-moving energy is not as healthful.
Upward-moving energy makes a person literally up-set messed up and mixed up. Downward moving energy helps one calm down. For details about this interesting subject, read Downward-moving Energy And Healing.
Cancer. In our experience, eating a most fruit increases cancer in the body. We know this opinion is not shared by most physicians. However, it is our experience.
One reason is that eating most fruit causes yeast overgrowth and this causes production of alcohol and acetaldehyde inside the body. These chemicals are powerful liver toxins. They also damage other organs and tissues. For details, read The Aldehydes.
Attention deficit disorders, autism, cancers and other problems in children. Eating fruit is particularly harmful for fast oxidizers, which includes most young children. Fast oxidizers must eat fat with each meal. The sugar in fruit upsets the metabolism severely.
Deranged digestion. Eating fruit seriously deranges the digestive system in many people. Sugar in all fruit feeds yeasts, parasites, and other harmful pathogens in the intestines.
The digestive tract becomes more yin, more fragile and often more “leaky”. This affect the digestion and absorption of all nutrients. It always seems to aggravate or cause overgrowth of yeasts such as candida albicans.
Fruit acids and the toxic potassium found in today’s fruit also irritate the intestines. Most fruit is also sprayed with pesticides, and the residues often also irritate the intestines, even with organically grown fruit. Fruit requires pesticides in many areas to grow it at all. Even the natural pesticides used on organic fruit are somewhat toxic.
Interferes with sulfur metabolism. This may sound esoteric, but it is extremely important. Fruit is very low in sulfur, and sulfur is a critical nutrient. Many fruits also contain copper, a sulfur antagonist. In contrast, many vegetables contain a lot of sulfur.
Cardiovascular problems. Fruit weakens the cardiovascular system and can cause a shortened lifespan. Fructose, a sugar common in fruit, affects copper metabolism. This may be the reason for its negative effects on the cardiovascular system.
Pain syndromes. Stopping all fruit and returning to a diet with plenty of cooked, and not raw, vegetables often stops joint pain and other types of pain within a few weeks. Causes for pain with fruit-eating may be a zinc deficiency, inflammation due to fruit acids and toxic potassium, too much sugar, and possibly other causes.
Diabetic symptoms. The combination of low zinc, a higher-sugar diet, and B-vitamin deficiencies that can develop from eating too much fruit can result in diabetic symptoms. The most prominent of these is often peripheral neuropathy, which means tingling, burning or numbness in the legs and feet and rarely in the hands or elsewhere. Other symptoms may include frequent urination, fatigue, depression and others.
Weight gain. Many people believe that eating fruit will cause weight loss, and they are seriously disappointed. Fruit is not a low-calorie food.
Also, eating sugar in any form causes weight gain by many mechanisms, such as stressing the insulin mechanism of the body, impairing the activity of the thyroid and adrenal glands, causing some water retention, and perhaps other mechanisms, as well. Yeast infestation from eating fruit can also cause bloating and weight gain.
Parasitic infections. Eating fruit makes the digestive tract much more yin and toxic with chemicals, in some cases. This makes the gut much more susceptible to parasites, which are “cold” infective organisms that love sugar.
Other reasons why fruit favors parasite infestation are that fruit often carries parasitic organisms if it is not washed properly and is eaten raw.
Also, a damaged and somewhat delicate digestive tract cannot protect itself against some parasites that are found commonly in some foods and water supplies.
Birth defects. Eating a lot of fruit is associated with more birth defects. This is probably due to very low zinc in fruits, low protein, more pesticide residues and more toxic potassium in fruit.
Pesticide poisoning. This occurs because most fruit is sprayed heavily, even if it is advertised as being organically grown. Even natural pesticides that must be used on fruit can build up in the body in a toxic fashion, affecting the liver and kidneys, in particular.
Toxic metal poisoning. Those who eat a lot of fruit seem to be particularly prone to the accumulation of mercury and copper. The reason may be that most fruit lacks the balancing elements of zinc and sulfur. These are needed for liver detoxification of the metals and of many toxic chemicals as well.
Mental and emotional symptoms. Eating too much or the wrong fruit is associated with anxiety, depression, irritability, and panic attacks. We know this because when a person who is eating a lot of fruit and having any of these symptoms stops eating fruit, often these symptoms vanish within a few days to a few weeks. If a person has eaten fruit for a long time, symptoms may take longer to reverse.
Dry drunk syndrome. Eating fruit feeds yeast in the body. Common yeasts such as candida albicans produce alcohol. As a result, one can feel somewhat drunk all the time even though one may drink no alcohol.
Symptoms are feeling spacey, tired, difficulty focusing the mind, impaired memory, impaired thinking, and a slow reaction time. This is a type of dry drunk syndrome.
Eating fruit can retard maturity. This is an interesting topic related to a certain group of minerals that are related to emotional maturity. For details, read The Child Minerals.
Fruit is actually acid-forming in the body. This statement goes against that which is found in most nutrition books. However, we find it to be true in clinical practice.
The bodies today are all too acidic at the deepest level, no matter what blood or other tests reveal. This is due to mineral-deficient food, the presence of yeast, and improper diets. Eating foods that worsen this situation is very harmful.
Reasons why fruit has an acidic effect are:
A. Fruit acids. Textbooks of nutrition often say that even though fruit contains some mild acids, the mineral content of the fruit eventually causes an alkaline reaction in the body. However, we find that this is no longer the case because of the genetic modification of fruit and its lower mineral content today.
As a result, the acids in the fruit can give many fruits an overall acidic reaction.
B. Picked unripe. Much fruit is picked unripe so it can be transported easily and arrive ready to eat. Often, it is ripened on trucks and aircraft, which is not proper. This tends to make the fruit more acid-forming.
C. Fruit sugars. Sugars tend to be acid-forming in their internal reaction, especially fructose.
D. Imbalanced minerals in most fruit today. The mineral content of fruit is not optimum for our bodies. Today, this is due in part to the use of superphosphate fertilizers used on most farms, including organic fruit orchards. For more details, read The Acid-Alkaline Balance.
Fruit-eating can damage the enamel of the teeth. Fruit acids can damage the dentin or outside layer of the teeth. This is well known by some dentists, and is another reason be careful with eating fruit.
Anger and belligerence. Another interesting symptom that occurs at times from eating a lot of fruit is the development of a stubborn, and often belligerent and angry nature. This could be due to a zinc deficiency or perhaps a B-vitamin deficiency of some type. It may be due to a more yin condition, which makes a person more fearful and anxious.
Loss of mental acuity. In our experience, this symptom, also called brain fog, is more common in those who eat fruit. It may be due to yeast overgrowth in the brain.
Low iodine may also play a role, or perhaps low levels of some of the B-complex vitamins. Taking supplements of these nutrients may help, but frequently they are not enough to stop the progress of this mental degeneration that is very sad to observe.
Slower development. Eating fruit slows and can stop the amazing and wonderful process that on this website only is called development. This is a genetic upgrade of the body that toughens the body and extends life.
Exception. As one develops to an intermediate level, you will need a very small amount of certain fruit with each meal. This level of development requires at least 30 years of following the development program.
For a developed person, a very small amount of certain fruit helps balance what are called the upper energy centers of the body. These are spinning vortices of subtle energy that are part of the subtle or esoteric anatomy of all human beings and animals. For details, read The Energy Centers.
We urge everyone to learn about development. For details, read Introduction To Development, Introduction To The Development Program, and other articles on this subject on this website.
Adhesions. The sugar in fruit contributes to and causes adhesions in the body. This is a terrible problem for some people.
In fact, sugar is used as a sclerosing agent in prolotherapy. This therapy intentionally causes adhesions in order to tighten loose ligaments. (We do not recommend prolotherapy.)
A shorter lifespan. In our experience, those who eat a lot of fruit live shorter lives. They may live apparently healthfully for years, but suddenly their health declines and they die quickly at an earlier age than most other people.
1. Fruit is one of the most yin foods one can eat. In the Macrobiotic conception of yin and yang, fruit is an extremely yin food.
Yin is a physics term. It means cold, expanded, and often sweet-tasting or sugary. Fruit also grows above ground and often up in the air, another quality associated with yin.
In botanical terms, fruits are expanded ovaries of plants. This body part is also more yin.
In the traditional Chinese conception of yin and yang, fruit is not uniformly yin. However, it is uniformly yin in the macrobiotic view of yin and yang, and we find this to be most accurate. The problems with yin foods are:
- Most people’s bodies today are already extremely yin. This is due to radiation poisoning, toxic chemicals in the environment, mineral-deficient food and electrical pollution from computers, cell phones, cell phone towers and other electrical devices.
Even though fruit contains some vitamins and other nutrients, most of it is extremely yin and eating more yin food worsens the yin problem.
- Tropical fruits tend to be more yin, and thus are the worst from this perspective. They include common fruits such as bananas, pineapple, coconut in all forms and preparations, dates, figs, papaya, citrus fruits and others.
This also includes tropical fruit drinks such as noni, goji, acai and others (see Tropical Fruit Drinks for more on this subject).
- Most fruit is eaten raw. Eating anything raw is even more yin.
- Fruit juice is even more yin. It is more concentrated, contains much more sugar and less fiber to buffer the acids and sugars in the fruit.
For much more on the serious problem of yin with fruit, read Yin Disease and other articles about yin and yang on this website.
2. Fruit upsets the blood sugar level and causes excessive insulin release. The relatively high sugar content of almost all fruit causes this reaction. This adds stress to the body, can cause weight gain or impair weight loss, and causes other imbalances deep inside the cells.
Many people are unaware of the high sugar content of most fruit. It can be extremely high, especially with fruit juices, dried fruit or fruit that is packed or dipped in sugar. These are even worse than eating fresh fruit.
3. Fruit-eating often contributes to yeast overgrowth. Most people, even those who do not eat much fruit, already have an overgrowth of intestinal yeast such as candida albicans and others. This is due to toxic metal poisoning, and especially copper imbalance. Other mineral imbalances may also contribute, as does overeating on carbohydrate foods.
The high sugar content of most fruit worsens this important condition. The yin nature of fruit also tends to worsen all fungal and parasitic infections because fungus and yeast conditions are yin infections. That is, they tend to be cold and parasitic in nature. For more on this subject, read Candida Albicans Infections and Parasites on this website.
4. Fruit is extremely harmful for babies and children because it enhances the oxidation rate, especially in the short term. This is a stimulatory effect due to its low fat content and higher sugar content. This is particularly harmful for younger children, whose oxidation rate is already too fast.
For this reason, do not give babies and children ANY fruit or fruit juices, or for that matter, any sweets at all. This is hard for many parents, since children often love sweets and doctors and television personalities often recommend it highly. They are wrong! It will help your child’s health immensely if you keep them away from all sweet foods, including fruit and fruit juices of all kinds. This is very important for children.
What about milk? Some people may respond to the above by saying that mother's milk is sweet, and it is excellent for babies. This is true. However, milk contains mainly a different sugar, lactose. Lactose is a disaccharide and is therefore burned or utilized more slowly than fructose or glucose found in fruit.
Mother's milk also contains a lot of fat and protein. These nutrients balance mother's milk.
Once a child reaches the age of about three and stops breast feeding, we find drinking milk is not healthful for most children.
5. Fructose, a prominent sugar in fruit, is one of the worst sugars to consume. Fructose does not directly raise the blood sugar as fast as glucose, for example. Instead, it goes directly to the liver. The liver must convert it to glucose.
However, most people cannot convert fructose to glucose well enough because the livers are weak and all are infested with worms and other parasites. What occurs is the fructose is mainly converted to triglycerides. Too much of these are very harmful for the cardiovascular system and lead to clogged arteries and obesity. Please listen to this advice. We assure you it is true.
Medical evidence also indicates that fructose interferes with copper metabolism, is inflammatory, and may contribute to metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes. Read more about fructose in the article entitled Fructose.
6. Most fruit is sprayed with pesticides no matter what the label says. In order for fruit to grow in most areas, particularly some parts of the United States, it needs to be sprayed. This makes all fruit more toxic.
Fruit also picks up pesticides and other chemicals more than most other foods because it is more yin or expanded than most other foods. This worsens the toxic chemical problem.
One of the most commonly sprayed fruits are grapes grown to make wine. This can include organic wine.
We find that people who drink a lot of wine usually have higher levels of lead and arsenic in their hair. Lead arsenate is often sprayed on grapes.
7. Genetic Modification and Hybridization. Fruit today is not the same as it was 100 years ago. Modern fruit is often hybridized and genetically modified. Few people realize this unless, perhaps, you have an old crab apple tree where the fruit was small and it was not as sweet as it is today.
Most fruit today is grown for mass consumption and is larger, sweeter, less nutritious, lower in mineral content, and for these reasons even more expanded or yin. For more, read GMO Foods on this site.
8. Cleanliness is often a hidden problem with fruit. Fruit today is often picked by workers whose cleanliness is not always the best. The surface of fruit always contains bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms. If it is not washed thoroughly, eating it can cause hepatitis, parasites and other infections.
The fruit we recommend we always recommend cooking it (blue corn chips and green beans) or preparing it with vinegar or drying it (olives). This helps clean it up.
If you must eat fruit, always wash it carefully. Never eat fruit right from the store or even from a tree, without washing it carefully.
Also, do not leave fruit sitting out on the kitchen counter overnight and then eat it without washing it again. Fruit attracts flies, mites, ticks and other tiny insects that can quickly infect the fruit with disease.
WHY DOES THE BIBLE RECOMMEND FRUIT?
I am told there is a mistranslation of the early part of the the Book of Genesis where God recommends eating every plant bearing fruit. The proper translation is every tree bearing seed, not fruit.
The Bible also contains the story of the forbidden fruit. We believe there is truth to this story, although most people dismiss it.
WHAT ABOUT EATING VEGETABLES THAT ARE REALLY FRUITS?
Vegetables that are really fruit are those with seeds. These include:
All tomatoes (red, green, cherry, and others).
All peppers (red, green, and hot chili peppers).
All squashes (zucchini, summer squash, butternut, spaghetti, acorn and perhaps others).
Others are okra, cucumbers, eggplant, olives, peas and string beans.
Recommendations. String beans are a preferred food for development and are excellent to eat a little with each meal.
Winter squashes (spaghetti squash, butternut squash and acorn squash) are not too yin, and may be eaten up to twice a week if one wishes. However, summer squashes (zucchini, sunburst, yellow squash or others) are more yin. They are not recommended at all, or only on rare occasions.
We suggest avoiding the other vegetables that are really fruits. These are all of the nightshade family vegetables. These include all tomatoes, white and red potatoes, peppers of all kinds, and eggplant. These foods are all quite yin, and they contain a toxin called solanin that is irritating and inflammatory.
Always cook all vegetables and do not eat them raw.
WHAT ABOUT CONSUMING FRUIT OILS SUCH AS OLIVE, GRAPE SEED, COCONUT AND PALM OILS?
Olive oil is okay, but do not heat it. This means do not cook with it. It forms a very harmful toxin when cooked, especially cooked for more than a few minutes. Sardines packed in olive oil are fine because they are cooked for a very short time.
Grapeseed oil is another fruit oil that is not too bad.
Coconut oil is extremely yin and somewhat toxic. We would avoid it. It leaves a toxin in the liver.
One can also buy walnut oil, hazelnut oil and other nut oils. We suggest everyone eat some roasted almond butter. The almond is a very special food.
We would avoid other nut butters because they are all quite yin.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FRUIT-EATING
This is an interesting topic, though it might seem strange.
Talking parasites. Eating fruit feeds parasites that most everyone has today. Parasitic worms are highly intelligent creatures.
When one stops eating fruit, the parasites become angry. When this occurs, they secrete chemicals that can make one feel awful. They do this so you will think you need to eat fruit. They can communicate and will urge you to eat fruit. We are not kidding!
Yeast and dry drunk syndrome. Eating fruit produces some alcohol in the body. This occurs because sugar feeds yeast, and many common yeasts produce alcohol. The alcohol dulls pain and negative emotions.
When one stops eating fruit, alcohol production decreases. Therefore, one will tend to feel more pain and become more aware of negative thoughts and feelings.
This is very discouraging for most people, and not easy to handle. So they go back to eating fruit or other sweet or starchy food.
When one stops eating fruit, one will have handle these mental aspects. Many of these feelings are simply due to impaired health. They go away by following the development program.
It is also possible to reprogram yourself through a deep understanding of what we call One Science or The Science of Love. For details, read One Science, Self-Love, The Real Self Audio Program and The Real Self.
FRUIT-EATING AND TISSUE MINERAL ANALYSIS
The oxidation rate. Eating fruit has complex effects upon the mineral balance of the body. This is because it affects blood sugar, liver activity, favors yeast growth, feeds parasites, and other reasons.
An overall effect is that fruit tends to unbalance the oxidation rate. In some people, it causes a very fast oxidation rate. In others, it causes a slow oxidation rate. This is just an observation.
WHAT IF I CRAVE FRUITS?
When the body is out of balance or ill, food cravings are common. These slowly disappear with the development program.
Cravings are due to mineral imbalances and many other factors. It just takes time on the development diet and program to slowly overcome them.
To reduce cravings for fruit, be sure to eat every few hours and be sure to include some animal protein and a little fat or oil with most meals, especially if you are in a fast oxidation state.
If you must eat a little fruit. For those who cannot stop their fruit intake immediately, here are some guidelines:
a) Eat as little fruit as possible.
b) If possible, eat fruit from heirloom (very old) trees, as it will be less hybridized.
c) Eat smaller, cold-weather fruits such as a little apple, peach, pear or a few berries either by themselves or perhaps added to some raw milk yogurt.
d) Ideally, eat fruit alone as a snack. It does not combine well with other foods.
e) Totally avoid all fruit juices, dried fruit, canned fruit packed in sugar, and all tropical and citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit. Sub-tropical fruit to definitely avoid are coconut, avocado, dates, figs and other sub-tropical fruits. This is true for babies and children as well.
f) Dried fruit is more yin in some ways, and certainly more sugary. Avoid it, please, even as a snack. It is far better to eat some leftover cooked vegetables, turkey or beef jerky, almond butter, blue corn chips, a piece of cheese or other protein-rich snacks, than a piece of dried or fresh fruit.
Home | Hair Analysis | Saunas | Books | Articles | Detox Protocols