6 THINGS TO LOOK FOR
WHEN BUYING FRUITS & VEGETABLES
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I recommend that you do your best to make sure that the fruits and vegetables that you buy are "Organic", "Fresh",
"Local", "In-Season", "Whole", and "Ripe".
If you feel that it's a waste of time to do this step I would agree with you if the only fruits and vegetables that you ever
eat are the lettuce leaf and the 2 slices of pickles that you get in a McDonald's Big Mac, but if you are following the Raw
Food Diet that I recommend and 100% of the foods that you buy are from the produce section than the quality of the
produce that you buy suddenly becomes far more important.
If I want to buy an avocado I can walk into a store and easily pick out the best avocado in the store even if they have
hundreds of them thanks to all of the tips that I have learned over the years on how to pick out good quality produce
and below are 6 very basic things that you can start doing right away and as time goes on you will gradually learn
countless other small tips that will help you become a master at being able to pick out the best quality produce around...
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1. ORGANIC
Ideally only buy fruits and vegetables that are "organic", because fruits and vegetables that aren't grown organically are
sprayed with Pesticides, Herbicides, Fungicides, Larvicides, Insecticides, etc. (These poisons are designed to KILL
living organisms that try to eat the fruits and vegetables that they are sprayed on.) Because of how big we are we won't
drop dead from taking a bite out of an apple with pesticides on it the same way that a caterpillar might, but consuming
small amounts of these poisons over time has been linked to many health problems including asthma, cancer, and even
birth defects.
The raw food diet is about eating living foods, so eating foods that are sprayed with a death agent is not something that
I would recommend!
In America alone over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are being dumped directly onto our food supply each year and it
never ceases to amaze me that the average shopper doesn't view this as a reason to be concerned. Broccoli alone can
have over 50 different pesticides spayed on it throughout it's growing process, and apples can have over 100!
One of the biggest potential problems with pesticide poisons is the fact that in nature "Only The Strong Survive", and
although pesticides may kill off the weakest insects, the strongest ones will survive and will then breed with each other to
create a new generation of "pests" that are stronger and far more destructive than the generation before.
Another potential problem is that many non-organic fruits are purposely being grown to be seedless, meaning that when
you buy the fruit you can't plant its seeds in your garden and grow more of them. (Kind of like the way that newer DVD's
and CD's are formatted so that people can't make copies of them and share them with other people over the internet.)
And many corporations are trying their best to make it illegal for anyone other than them to grow a certain food crop.
It is completely up to us the consumers to start demanding foods that were grown organically. If the grocery store that
you shop at doesn't currently sell organic produce it is only because there hasn't been a big enough demand for it yet,
so simply ask them if they can start specially ordering it for you. (The odds are that they can and will welcome the extra
business.)
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2. FRESH
The fruits and vegetables at super markets are usually weeks or even months old. (If they are canned or frozen they will
probably be years old!) so it is basically impossible to get any truly fresh fruits and vegetables at a supermarket, but if
you grow your own food everything that you eat can be as fresh as you desire. (You could even eat apples while they
are still connected to the tree if you really wanted to.)
A lot of people immediately think that they can't grow their own food because they don't have enough land, but even if
you live in an apartment with no yard there is still quite a bit of things that you can grow. (I've even seen where people
living in apartments have lettuce growing on their living room walls sideways using hydroponics, so anything is possible
if you have a strong enough desire to grow your own food.)
In the past everyone knew how to grow food, but today most high school and college graduates have no clue how to
grow their own food and because of this they are 100% dependent on grocery stores for their food, and being able to
grow your own food will give you a freedom from this. (We also need to protect our natural rights to grow our own food
because believe me when I say that there are powerful people out there who want to make it illegal for us to grow our
own food.)
Although gardening requires some effort on your part the amount of food that you get in return can be infinitely greater.
(An apple tree for example has the same life expectancy as a human being, so if all you did was plant an apple tree you
could be provided with hundreds of apples every year for the rest of your life!)
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3. LOCAL
One time when I was at a grocer store I noticed that the Cucumbers were from Mexico, the Avocados were from
California, the Celery was from Texas, the Apples were from Washington DC, and the Kiwis were from New Zealand.
Variety is good, but it makes no sense to me that people living in Florida will actually buy bags of oranges that were
grown in California and that people living in California will buy bags of oranges that were grown in Florida or that people
would buy an apple that came from over 1,000 miles away when there are literally millions of apples growing right there
in their local area.
The average fruit or vegetable in a supermarket traveled 1,500 miles to get there and when you eat more locally grown
produce you are helping to cut back on all of the unnecessary driving and pollution that is taking place in order to
transport produce across the country and across the world, and of course you are able to eat fresher produce!
If you don't grow your own food, the next best thing that you can do is to buy your food from a local "Farmer's Market".
(Click HERE to find out if there is a "Farmer's Market" in your community.)
A Farmer's Market is a place where local farmers come together and sell their fruits and vegetables to the public. There
are no bar codes on the produce sold at a farmer's market, because you are buying everything directly from the farmers
and there is no need for all the middle men. Usually the produce that you buy at a farmer's market will have been
picked within 24 hours and will have traveled less than 100 miles. Shopping this way supports local farming, is better for
the environment, and can save you money. It is a completely different experience than going to a grocery store, and
you can actually talk to the farmers and ask them anything you want about how they grow their food, plus many of them
will also let you sample their food as well.
There is a great saying about food shopping that goes, "Shake The Hand That Feeds You."
When you look at the longest living cultures on Earth and you try to figure out what their secret is you will find that not all
of them eat the exact same diets, but what you will find is that ALL of them eat foods that grow in their local area and
they all have a very close connection with the land that they live and eat from.
If you live in a really cold climate and you want to live on raw fruits and vegetables you will have no choice but to eat a
lot of foods that aren't locally grown. We humans were designed to live in the tropics and the proof for this is that the
further away we live from them the harder it is to grow fruits and vegetables, the more clothing we have to wear since
our naked bodies weren't designed to be in cold weather, and the more sickness we come down with due to not being
able to get adequate sunlight during the winter months.
If you are currently living in a cold climate you can still thrive on this diet even if the foods that you eat aren't locally
grown, but in the future you will almost definitely find yourself longing to move to a warmer location.
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4. IN-SEASON
These days there are very few fruits and vegetables that you can't find at the supermarket all year long. Watermelon for
example was something that in the past you could only find in the summer time, but today if you want to eat watermelon
in the middle of the winter you can go to a supermarket and find some. These "winter watermelons" however were
grown in hot houses and they simply won't be as delicious or nutritious as the watermelons that were grown outdoors
and picked during the peak of "watermelon season".
Yes, it's true that if you only eat fruits and vegetables when they are in season you will have to wait several months for
your favorite foods to come back in season, but the wait will make it all the more enjoyable once that season returns,
plus there is always something good in-season.
Fruits and vegetables that aren't in-season are harder to grow or will have to be shipped and transported from far away
locations to get to you and will therefore cost more money, but when fruits and vegetables are in-season and are
growing in abundance they cost less to grow, transport, and buy.
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5. WHOLE
So why should we make an effort to buy foods that are in their whole and natural state? Let's use apples as a general
example...
When apple growers sell their apples to grocery stores they sell them the best quality apples that they have, but when
apple growers sell their apples to apple juice factories they sell them the apples that grocery stores wouldn't buy due to
the apples being too small, unripe, bruised, or about to go bad. (Don't be fooled by the pictures of perfect looking
apples on the label of store-bought apple juice. If the apples used had really looked that good they would have ended
up in the produce section where they can be sold for top dollar.)
Because of this all factory made juices have to be pasteurized by law to kill off any harmful bacteria that could be lurking
in the juice, but unfortunately the pasteurization process also destroys a lot of the nutritional value of the juice and
alters the look and the taste of the juice so much that it doesn't even look or taste like apple juice anymore, so before
they can sell it to the public they have to add sugar, food coloring, and artificial apple flavoring to it just to make it look
and taste like apple juice again.
If you are eating an apple in it's whole and natural state you'll know if it has a bruise, a rotten spot, or anything else
wrong with it simply by looking at it, and even if you somehow don't notice the problem with your eyes you will realize that
something is wrong with it as soon as you bite into it and it tastes strange to you and your natural instinct is to spit it out
immediately, but if an apple is going bad and it gets used to make a bottle of apple juice or a jar of applesauce and
there are artificial flavorings and colorings in it how are you going to know?
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6. RIPE
One of the biggest problems with shopping at a grocery store is that most major food growers pick their fruits and
vegetables as soon as they are big enough to sell, or simply whenever they are scheduled to make their next shipment
instead of waiting until they have had a chance to fully ripen.
- If a fruit is ripe it means that the seeds inside of it have fully developed and can grow.
- If a fruit is unripe it means that the seeds inside of it haven't fully developed yet and can't grow yet.
Fruit trees only want their fruit to be eaten when the fruit is ripe and it will reward or punish those that eat it's fruit
accordingly...
Humans have a sweet tooth for a reason, and that reason is to seek out sweet tasting ripe fruit and to avoid eating bitter
tasting unripe fruit which can do us harm.
Learning how to tell if the fruits that you buy are ripe or not is somewhat of an art form and it may take time for you to
master the skill of being able to tell right away if a fruit is ripe or not simply by looking at it, smelling it, or squeezing it,
but learning how to do this will make a huge difference in your health.
When buying fruit it is important to know that there are basically 2 types of fruit. There are "Climacteric Fruits" and
"Non-Climacteric Fruits"...
CLIMACTERIC FRUITS
These are fruits that will continue to ripen after they have been picked from the tree or plant that they grow on and are
therefore ok to buy when unripe. (An example of this would be Bananas, which are usually picked when they are green
and then sold about 2 weeks later when they are starting to turn yellow, and then they sit on people's kitchen counters
for about a week until their skin is speckled with brown "ripe spots".) Below is a list of fruits that can ripen after being
picked...
NON-CLIMACTERIC FRUITS
These are fruits that can only ripen on the tree or plant that they grow on and once they are picked they can no longer
ripen any further. (An example of this would be pineapples which are a golden yellow color when they are ripe, but if
they are picked when they are still green and unripe they will stay green and unripe.) Below is a list of fruits that can't
ripen after they have been picked...
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* Apples
* Apricots
* Avocados
* Bananas
* Cantaloupes
* Cherimoyas
* Figs
* Kiwis
* Mangoes
* Papayas
* Peaches
* Pears
* Persimmons
* Watermelons
* Blackberries
* Blue Berries
* Cherries
* Cucumbers
* Grape Fruits
* Grapes
* Lemons
* Limes
* Olives
* Oranges
* Peppers
* Pineapples
* Pomegranates
* Pumpkins
* Raspberries
* Strawberries
FRUIT THAT IS UNRIPE
* Will taste sour and bitter
* Will look dull
* Will have no aroma
* Will give you a stomach ache
* Will be acidic and rob you of minerals
FRUIT THAT IS RIPE
* Will taste sweet and flavorful
* Will look bright and colorful
* Will smell sweet
* Will give you energy
* Will be nutritious