How fruit can help you and the planet

Fruits are nutritious foods that contain fiber and essential nutrients such as vitamin C, folate, and potassium. Sadhguru—yogi, mystic and the foremost authority on yoga—explains. He discusses the benefits of incorporating more fruits into one’s diet or undertaking a predominantly or totally fruit-based diet, as well as certain precautions that one should take.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that adults eat 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit per day. Consuming a sufficient amount of fruits can work wonders for your health. In any machine, with any kind of fuel that we use, the efficacy of the fuel essentially depends on how easily it burns. For example, the kind of gasoline you use for a regular automobile is different from what you use in a race car or an airplane because of how easily it burns. You might have seen the octane levels in gas stations – eighty-seven, eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one, ninety-three, ninety-six. When we were riding motorcycles, we would pay three times and buy a hundred octanes because suddenly the motorcycle performs in a way that others cannot.

Similarly, the most easily digestible food is fruit. Digestion means jataragni – the digestive fires. If these fires have to burn most effectively, fruit is definitely the best thing. Unfortunately, a lot of people enjoy lethargy and inertia. Life has not truly touched them, so they enjoy a part of them being dead. Sleep, intoxication, overeating and just lying down feels better than being alive, active and dynamic. Fruit may be a problem only for such a person because it will keep you alert and awake. It does not keep you intoxicated, unless it ferments of course! And one can know an extreme sense of joy, intoxication and a deep pleasure out of heightened levels of awareness also. But now the question is, “Can I eat fruit and still be normal?”

A simple answer is in your general practice of life itself. Suppose you are ill in a hospital bed, no one will bring you fried chicken. They will bring healthy foods, like fruit, because your friends and relatives understand why you got sick and care about you eating sensibly moving forward. 

Fruit is one aspect that nature itself intends to be food. The seed is the important part of the mango. The flesh is only a draw, a lure so that animals and birds will go for it and carry the seed somewhere far away.

Fruit can do miraculous things to the body. One can become alive and active, no matter what your lifestyle is. If you are only on a fruit diet and very physically active, you may need to bring three meals into your day. If you are sleeping six or eight hours, for the remaining sixteen to eighteen hours, eating three times is more than enough if you are eating fruit. But the stomach will feel empty within two hours, so you must get used to hanging on with high energy but an empty stomach. This is the time your brain works best and you as a human being function best.

Whether you want to use your brainpower or be engaged in physical activity, fruit will work perfectly well.

Above all, it is ecologically a very sensible way to eat. Everyone should turn at least thirty percent fruity – that is, at least thirty percent of your diet should become fruit. If thirty percent of your food comes from trees, not from plowed land and crop, ecologically it will make a huge difference for the world.

Sadhguru will be personally offering Inner Engineering in Philadelphia, May 5th – 6th at Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. As Sadhguru rarely conducts this program, this is a unique opportunity to learn Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, a life-transforming practice from him. To learn more visit: www.InnerEngineering.com or contact us at Philly@ishausa.org.