Yup. I'm 15, and Fruitarian

I get the feeling, reading books and blogs and things, that most raw vegans and fruitarians are older people, who a lot of times spent so many years eating cooked food, and later got very sick from this, and happened hear about and switch over to a vegan, raw, or fruitarian diet, and this is how they were introduced to this way of life.

I really do think its so great that there are more and more people switching over to this diet - thanks to this, I found out about veganism, then raw veganism, then fruitarianism before I could do any real, serious damage to my body with the cooked foods I enjoyed so much.

I started out, when I was about 12 or 13, eating 'healthier' - no more white bread, eating only organic, grass-fed beef, and lots of brown rice and spices and such (daddy was very into eating 'healthy' in the late '80s, early '90s, before I was born, so he tried to help me out and point me in the right direction.) I also read many books that told me that eating this way, whole grains and organic meat, was good for you.

Then, I read a book called 'Skinny Bitch'. It discussed all the reasons that animal products were bad for you, the economy.. And it discussed how the animals were treated. After reading this book, I converted to veganism without a second thought; Daddy was fine with this, but all of my friends at school kept insisting that I was going to die from lack of calcium, I wasn't getting enough protein, etcetera. They tried talking my parents into making me eat meat, and then when that didn't work, they attempted to talk the guidance councillor into somehow forcing me to change back to a SAD.

One of the main antagonizors of this 'trying to help me' was my friend, Megan. Several months later, she began doing some reading, and actually, after a lot of research and experimenting, ended up becoming a raw vegan 6 months later. (She has a blog, too, if you'd like to check it out.) She actually just recently did an interview with the local newspaper about her diet, which I thought was reallly cool, because a lot of people do read the paper, and it would have educated many people in Ripon that such a diet existed, and maybe encourage them to learn more about it. I learned all about the raw vegan diet from her, but actually ended up becoming fruitarian before I ever tried raw veganism; now, this was the summer before 9th grade, I was 14. I switched for all the wrong reasons - thinking, 'woah, I'll never have to worry about getting fat if I eat this way!'

Because I was thinking this way, I actually ended up digressing to eating more vegetables a few months later, and then i started getting into raw recipes and using nuts and such as well. Now, it's a year later, I'm 15. My family has changed and started eating healthy*er* at least, because of me; they only eat grassfed beef and free range organic chicken, and we usually go to whole foods and another really amazing health food store in Madison called Willy St. Co-Op at least once a month. While dad always insists that he could never eat the way I do, he does absolutely support me and try to help me out and encourage me, and I love that he buys me all the raw food that I eat, even though it's so much more expensive than what he and the rest of the family eat.

Anyhow, several weeks ago, I started feeling really just... Depressed, tired, especially after eating nuts and stuff. I'm not sure what caused it, but I started thinking more about the fruitarian diet I experimented with just a little over a year ago. This time I purchased a few books, read a bunch of blogs, thinking..if I failed at it last year, why should I succeed this year?

And then, I came across a post by Mango the Raw Vegan Fruitarian, on his blog, about the return to Eden, and the way it was the only way to achieve true peace, and.. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I could remember reading, and it made so much sense to me.. I made the decision then, and haven't eaten a vegetable, seed, or nut since, and sincerely don't plan on going back to doing so, ever.

...and that's how I got here, today, starting this blog. Because I think it will be interesting for me, to look back on later in my life and also... I think it would be good to let people know that there really are young people out there taking responsibility for their health and their world, because I feel that the world gives us a bad name all to often. And at the same time, I want to do my part to try and inform my peers about fruitarianism, as I do believe that it is the direction we all must move toward, inevitably...