MONO MEALS
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A "Mono Meal" is simply when you eat only 1 type of food in a meal and you don't do any kind of food combining. Below
are some common examples of mono eating...
- Eating nothing but watermelon for breakfast.
- Eating nothing but apples for lunch.
- Eating nothing but mangoes for dinner.
- Eating nothing but dates for a whole day.
- Eating nothing but bananas for a whole week.
- Eating nothing but orange juice for a whole month.
For people who are used to eating meals that involve a lot of ingredients and fancy food prep the idea of eating nothing
but pineapple might seem bland and boring, but to me the idea of eating all the pineapple that I want is pure heaven!
If you are new to the raw food diet things like salads and smoothies can be very helpful in making the transition from
cooked foods to raw foods a lot easier, but something that you will notice over time is that the longer you eat a raw food
diet the more you want to eat more simply, and there is no more simple way to eat than to eat only 1 type of food per
meal until no longer hungry. (I once went 657 days in a row eating only mono meals.)
While it can be wonderful to eat a meal that your mother spent a lot of time and energy creating for you it can also be
wonderful to eat a meal that mother nature spent a lot of time and energy creating for you.
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6 BENEFITS OF EATING MONO
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1. IT'S THE EASIEST MEALS TO DIGEST
Even some of the most basic foods that people eat involve some pretty crazy food combinations that result in digestive
problems after you eat them. To make a loaf of Bread for example you combine things like Eggs, Milk, Butter, Flour,
Sugar, Salt and Yeast, and when all of these foods combine they become a glue like substance that will clog up your
stomach. (Don't forget that the word "Gluten" is Latin for "Glue".)
If you make a simple sandwich using bread, bologna, cheese, and mayonnaise you may think that you are eating
something that only has a few ingredients in it, but if you actually read the ingredient lists for each of these ingredients
you may be surprised to find that there are actually close to 100 ingredients in that "simple sandwich".
What's absurd to me is when I hear people say that foods like pizza is healthy because they contain all 4 food groups.
(As if combining meat, dairy, grain, and fruits/vegetables in the same meal is good for you and won't result in digestive
disorders.)
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2. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW FOR SURE HOW YOUR BODY REACTS TO CERTAIN FOODS
Below is a list of the most common foods that people are allergic to. What's remarkable about this is the fact that
sometimes it takes people years to figure out that they are allergic to one of these foods because every time that they
consume these foods they are eating them with so many other ingredients that it's difficult for them to pin-point exactly
which ingredient it is that keeps making them sick. This simply wouldn't happen if people were eating their foods mono,
and the ONLY way to know for sure exactly how your body reacts to certain foods is to consume it mono and after the
previous meal has had time to digest...
THE MOST COMMON FOODS THAT PEOPLE ARE ALLERGIC TO
Garlic was a common ingredient that I would use in a lot of my meals until one day when I decided to see what would
happen if I sat down on an empty stomach and ate a meal nothing but garlic. When I tried this experiment my body gave
me EVERY sign imaginable that it didn't want what I was eating, yet I was putting it in so many of the foods that I was
eating.
Any foods that can't be consumed unless it is either in extremely small amounts or if it has been diluted with water or a
lot of other ingredients first is best not consumed at all.
If you wish to take ingredients that you would never want to eat mono (even if you were really hungry) such as garlic,
onions, hot peppers, hot sauce, chili powder, beef broth, salt and pepper and put all of them into a pot with some pork
and beans and make "chili" out of it that's your choice, but believe me when I say that eating a bowl of grapes will be so
much easier on your stomach.
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3. IT'S THE MOST NATURAL WAY TO EAT
Not only do all of the other species on the planet eat a "Raw Food Diet", but they also all eat "Mono Meals" as well.
It's amazing that such a simple concept as eating only one type of food until you're no longer hungry could seem so
complicated to people. Below is an amusing story about some mono meals I enjoyed in the park that really confused a
poor jogger...
One day I was sitting on a park bench enjoying some pears and a jogger passing by stopped and asked me what I was
eating. I told him, "Pears." and he looked at me all confused and said, "Just pears?" and I said "Yeah, would you like
some?" and he laughed and said "No thank you." and then continued jogging and as he was jogging away he kept
looking back at me with a confused look as if he couldn't believe that he saw someone eating a meal of just pears.
The next day I was at the park again and I saw the same jogger. This time I was eating a head of lettuce and he came up
to me and said, "What in the world are you eating this time?" When I told him that I was eating lettuce and nothing else
he looked 10 times more confused then he did the day before. I offered him some and he said "No thank you." but this
time he didn't laugh and as he was jogging away he kept looking back at me like he thought that I might be a psycho or
something...
Then about a week later I saw the jogger again and this time I was eating grapes and when he saw what I was eating he
came up to me and said, "So are you like a prophet or something???"
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4. IT FORCES YOU TO EAT GOOD QUALITY FOODS
When I first got into mono meals I immediately noticed that a lot of the fruits and vegetables that I had been eating for
years didn't taste very good on their own, but that's the beauty of this diet...
It's easy to settle for foods that aren't high quality when they are mixed with a dozen other ingredients and their taste is
disguised, but when you eat mono meals you will naturally be more picky about the quality of foods that you eat. Eating
a meal of nothing but tomatoes that taste like cardboard or a meal of nothing but bananas that aren't ripe yet won't be a
very pleasant experience so eating this way will force you to seek out better quality fruits and vegetables and once you
try really good quality fruits and vegetables the temptation to eat other things will lessen.
When I was a kid I would chew "Grape Flavored Bubble Gum", eat "Grape Flavored Popsicles", and drink "Grape
Flavored Kool-aid", and even when I got sick the children's medicine that I would take had "Grape Flavoring" in it to
make it taste better, but I don't remember ever wanting to actually eat real grapes because at the time the artificial grape
flavoring tasted better to me than any of the grapes that I had ever tried, but now that I have tried really good grapes the
idea of choosing an artificially grape flavored food over the real thing is just absurd.
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5. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW FOR SURE WHEN IT'S TIME TO START OR STOP EATING
If you eat only 1 type of fruit or vegetable per meal and you pay attention to the chewing, the taste, and the texture of
what you are eating your body will clearly let you know when it is no longer hungry and when it is time to stop eating, and
it will do this by causing your taste buds to literally shift in a way that will cause the delicious foods that you are eating to
become tasteless and unappealing, making it almost impossible to overeat.
A perfect example of this is avocados...
Avocados are a fatty fruit and if I sit down and eat 1 avocado it will taste a lot like cheese to me and I will enjoy it, but if I
then try to eat a second avocado the second one will taste more like butter to me and if I force myself to eat the whole
thing it will start to feel like I'm eating a stick of butter. (A clear indication that one avocado is enough and two avocados
are too many for me.) But if instead of eating the avocados mono I ate them in the form of guacamole I could easily eat
3 or 4 avocados before I lost my desire to eat them because when the avocados are mashed up and mixed with spicy
ingredients it will send mixed messages to my brain and in this confusion it will take me longer to get the message that
I've had enough avocado for one meal.
The bottom line here is that eating foods by themselves is the best way to both listen to your body as well as understand
what it is trying to tell you about what you are eating, and generally speaking the more ingredients involved the harder it
will be for you get the message.
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6. BETTER MENTAL CLARITY
The cleaner and more simplistic your diet is, the more clearly you can think and react, and if you think that it's a stretch
to say that eating a more natural and simplistic diet can make you "smarter", I would point out that there is plenty of
evidence out there showing that eating certain unhealthy foods can cause everything from "Attention Deficit Disorder" to
"Alzheimers Disease". Try this way of eating for a while and see if you don't experience any noticeable improvements in
your mental clarity.
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1. Dairy
2. Yeast
3. Wheat
4. Gluten
5. Soy
6. Eggs
7. Peanuts
8. Tree Nuts
9. Crabs
10. Fish
11. Shrimp
12. Lobster