the importance of ripe fruit

I remember from my days of eating gargantuan amounts of fruit how important it is to eat ripe fruit. If you try to eat 3000 kcals a day from unripe bananas, you're gonna have a bad time.

It's pretty simple actually. You don't eat raw potatoes because they are going to give you stomach problems. Unripe fruit is kind of like a raw potato. Humans weren't really meant to eat much starch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not know of any indigenous populations that eat raw starch.

Cooking a potato breaks down some of the starch so your body doesn't have to. Leaving a piece of fruit on a tree allows nature to break down starch so you don't have to. Nature is much better at breaking down starch than you are. Trust me.

This isn't me. This is Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram. She's an awesome resource. I'm not a raw vegan, but I follow a number of raw vegan blogs because:

1. Carbohydrates are not necessarily evil, even if you are hypoglycemic.

2. I don't really handle starch well. I know that a lot of people in the paleo-sphere will claim that sweet potatoes are better for your insulin response than sweet fruit, but I experience the opposite. So long as I don't binge on dates, my blood sugar is fine.

3. Raw vegans come up with the best salad ideas. Are you tired of oil and vinegar salad dressing? Subscribe to this girl's youtube channel and you can get so many ideas for salad dressings.

4. Low fat raw vegan blogs are great because all of the treats in the paleo-sphere are loaded with nuts and seeds and coconut oil, and frankly, I don't process nuts, seeds, or oils all that well. I eat enough fat to solubilize my nutrients and remain satiated, but some people thrive on a lower-fat, higher carbohydrate diet (compared to paleo ... I did not thrive as a low fat raw vegan)

4. You don't have to agree with everything someone else says in order to respect their opinions and utilize the resources they so kindly offer for free on the internet. Just sayin'

Anyway, here is everything you ever needed to know about ripe fruit:

You should note that the importance of eating ripe fruit applies to non-sweet fruits as well. If you're down with nightshades, you really shouldn't be eating green bell peppers because they're not ripe (you can cook the living hell out of them and that helps). This is why I don't eat conventional tomatoes as well.