Living on Fruit With Chris Kendall! Raw Food Diet Myths

22 years in, here is what I actually know about thriving on a high fruit raw vegan diet long term.

I had a blast joining Dr. Corassa live recently for a deep dive into what it really looks like to be living on fruit as a frugivorous raw vegan for over 22 years, and to bust some of the biggest myths swirling around the raw food world right now. We covered a lot of ground, from shopping for produce on a budget in Sweden, to B12, to the mucoid plaque obsession that I think is genuinely doing harm in this community.

Watch the full interview above, and keep reading for the highlights.

🍌 Living on Fruit in Sweden? Yes, Really.

One of the first things people ask when they find out I am based in Malmo, Sweden is some version of “but how?!” The assumption is that living on fruit in a cold northern country must be either impossible or brutally expensive. It is neither.

I spend around $250 a month on food, sometimes a bit more if I am splurging on off-season mangoes, and I eat abundantly. The key is knowing where to shop. There is an outdoor market near me open almost year round, and a wholesale supplier called Pure Fruitab AB where I buy cases at a time. Between those two, I am paying roughly half of what the fancier grocery stores charge, sometimes less.

I buy in bulk, maybe 60 to 80 kilos at a time, and I eat through it before restocking. A case of organic bananas, a couple cases of mangoes, tomatoes, oranges, greens. It is simple, it rotates naturally, and nothing goes to waste because I eat it while it is ripe. If you are looking to do the same wherever you are, find a wholesaler in your area. Most cities have them, and a lot are open to the public.

Check out my full video on this “Wholesale Tips for Raw Vegans” Here for more!

I also want to be clear about something: I live on a high fruit diet, not a fruit only diet. Greens and vegetables are absolutely part of what I eat and part of what I recommend. A frugivorous diet is abundant in fruit, yes, but greens and fresh vegetables matter too, especially for liver detox and long term thriving.

🌍 The Frugivore Case for Living on Fruit

When people ask why I eat this way, it comes back to what I call the Four Pillars of Truth: nature and comparative anatomy, the largest body of scientific data, long term shared experience, and intuition. Put all four together and the case for living on fruit as our primary food is incredibly strong.

We are frugivores. Our anatomy, our digestive physiology, our color vision, our taste preferences, the way our bodies handle carbohydrates… all of it points to fruit as our species appropriate food. That does not mean fruit only, and it does not mean ignoring individual needs or context. It means fruit forward, low fat, raw and abundant.

After 22 years of living on fruit as the foundation of my diet, coaching thousands of people, and watching others thrive on this path for 30 and 40 years, I am more convinced of this than ever.

💉 B12: The Myth That Is Actually Dangerous

There is a loud voice in parts of the raw food world right now saying B12 does not exist, or that supplementation is a scam, or that anyone eating naturally and putting their hands in soil does not need to worry about it. I want to be direct: this is wrong, and it is doing harm.

My own story is a pretty good case study. My first decade on a raw vegan diet I was proudly anti supplement. Around year nine or ten, my serum B12 had dropped to 82, and my methylmalonic acid and homocysteine were in alarming ranges. I was experiencing brain fog, joint pain, stress intolerance, and emotional volatility. Classic B12 deficiency symptoms that I had been dismissing. After supplementing, those symptoms cleared up. My MMA and homocysteine normalized. It was not subtle.

In my coaching practice I have seen this story repeat many times over. People who reject supplementation on philosophical grounds and end up with neurological damage that cannot fully be reversed once the myelin sheath has degraded far enough.

The preferred forms are methylcobalamin and adenocobalamin, ideally together since the methyl form supports nerve function and DNA synthesis while the adeno form supports mitochondrial health. Cyanocobalamin works too and is cheaper and more shelf stable. The important thing is to actually test: get serum B12, but also get MMA and homocysteine as the functional markers, since serum B12 can look acceptable while you are clinically deficient.

My full video and post on this is here: B12 Deficiency, Is It a Joke?

🚫 Mucoid Plaque: Let’s Put This One to Rest

The mucoid plaque myth is the other big one we went into during the live. The basic idea, for anyone who has not come across it, is that a hard or rubbery buildup forms on the walls of the digestive tract from eating “wrong” foods, and that this buildup is responsible for most disease and needs to be purged through cleanses, psyllium and bentonite protocols, or fasting.

It is not real. Not in the way it is being described in any way shape or form.

I have interviewed over two dozen experts on this, including pathologists who have done hundreds of autopsies and opened the entire digestive tract from mouth to anus analyzing every cell. I have spoken with Dr. Alan Goldhammer of TrueNorth, who has overseen over 25,000 supervised water fasts. What actually exists in there is pink, healthy intestinal wall, or in cases of disease, inflamed tissue. No rubbery black rope of accumulated mucoid plaque. Ever.

What comes out during cleanses and fasts is real, and it does look dramatic. It is sloughed off intestinal lining (the fastest reproducing cells in the body), microbiome matter, secreted mucus, and in juice feasting, gelled soluble fiber. This happens all the time. Fasting just concentrates and makes it visible in a way that eating high fiber food normally distributes throughout the stool.

The reason I talk about this loudly is that the cleansing obsession it creates does real harm. People cycle through cleanse after cleanse, disrupt their microbiome, reduce their HCL production, eat less and less, and drift toward orthorexia. The body does not need to be directed to purge a fictional substance. It needs to be fed abundantly and given the conditions to thrive.

The full debunking, including interview snippets with my friend Dr Areli the Pathologist, Dr. Goldhammer of True North, and with Dr. Douglas Graham, is here: Mucoid Plaque Myth Debunked

🍊 This Lifestyle Is One of Abundance

One thing I really wanted to land in this conversation is that living on fruit and a high fruit raw vegan diet is not a diet of restriction. It is the opposite. Fruit is the highest water content, highest fiber, most easily digested, most carbohydrate abundant food on the planet. One of the biggest pitfalls I see in coaching is people eating too little, thinking lighter and lighter is better and better. It is not.

Eat enough. Eat until you are satisfied. If you are relying on willpower, you are not eating enough calories. That is the single most common issue I see in people who struggle on this path.

There is also so much more to this lifestyle than just the food. Sleep, sun, movement, connection, stress levels, all of it matters. Diet cannot compensate for chronic under-sleeping, isolation, or constant stress. The full picture is what creates long term vibrancy.

For a deep dive into the top 10 Myths Sabotaging your raw food food lifestyle

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