Tables 1.0 and 2.0

The primary information source for Tables 1.0 and 2.0 is:

Heimo Scherz and Friedrich Senser (1994) Food Composition and Nutrition Tables. Medpharm Scientific Publishers: Stuttgart.

And supplementary information comes from:

Paul AA, Southgate DAT (1978) McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods. New York: Elsevier/North-Holland.

Paul AA, Southgate DAT, Russell J (1980) First Supplement to McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods. New York: Elsevier/North-Holland.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (1982) Composition of Foods: Fruits and Fruit Juices. U.S. Government Printing Office.

Table 1.0 (only)

"Fatty Acids" section, "Other" category: apple--sum of behenic, eicosenoic; orange--eicosenoic.

Amino acid profiles for mango, watermelon, are from USDA handbook, adjusted as follows:

[USDA amino acid profile vector] * [Scherz protein total/USDA protein total]

Table 2.0 (only)

"Fatty Acids" section, "Other" category: goat milk--sum of butyric, caproic, caprylic, C15, C17, C14 acids.

Fatty acid profile for avocado is from USDA handbook, adjusted as follows:

[USDA fatty acid profile vector] * [Scherz fat total/USDA fat total]

(Amino, fatty acid profiles were used from the most complete source whenever possible.)

Table 3.0 (only)

The fruit blend data in this table is computed from the data in Tables 1.0 and 2.0.

A series of short tables, with discussion, is provided here to analyze and summarize the voluminous data of Section I. These tables compare human milk, goat milk, and the two fruit averages specified in Table 3.0 of Section I by a variety of criteria.

Goat milk is used in the analysis, rather than cow's milk, for a number of reasons:

• Raw goat milk is more readily available in many areas (California, Georgia, for example), than raw cow's milk.

• Some raw lacto-vegetarians recommend and use raw goat milk instead of raw cow's milk.

• It is easier to produce goat milk than cow's milk. That is, if you are going to keep animals for your own raw milk supply, goats are lower maintenance than cows. Goats also require less land--an important advantage if you want to raise them. These considerations are important in those areas where the only way to have a reliable supply of raw milk is to raise the animals yourself.

Let us begin by looking at the calorie breakdown, as follows.

Table 4.0
Calorie Composition Percentages:
Milks vs. Fruit Blends

Units: % of total calories, for each food item.

What appear to be differences in proximate composition, as illustrated by Table 4.0, can be statistically tested via a t-test, using the raw data (rather than the calorie data). Using the t-test, we test the hypothesis that the average (fat, carbohydrate) levels in the "4 sweet fruits" group equals the (fat, carbohydrate) levels found in human milk. The result of such tests, i.e., the t-statistics for the test, are as follows.

• For fat, t = 38.8, significant difference with significance level P < 0.001.

• For carbohydrate (sugar), t = -2.88, significant difference with significance level P = 0.032 (one-sided test).

Remark: most people have common sense and can tell the difference between sugar and fat. However, it appears that some fruitarian extremists have a serious problem in this regard. :-)

Vitamin and mineral comparison. Tables 1.0 through 3.0 in Section I provide details on the vitamin and mineral composition of human and goat milks vs. fruit blends. Examination of those tables reveals the following:

• Milk has vitamins B-12, D, and biotin--whereas fruit has little or none of these vitamins.

• Milk provides some vitamin E, while the amount of vitamin E varies considerably by type of fruit. A similar situation exists in regard to vitamin A (milk has actual vitamin A), while the amount of carotenoids in fruit, the precursors of vitamin A, may vary widely, according to type (of fruit).

• Fruit contains more vitamin C than milk.

• Fruit has considerably more iron than milk.

• Milk has some sodium and little potassium; fruits have very little sodium and large amounts of potassium. The potassium/sodium ratio for milk is much lower than it is for fruits.

• The calcium/magnesium ratio for (human) milk is 10.12, while the ratio varies for each fruit. The two fruit blends analyzed in Table 3.0 had Ca/Mg ratios of ~1.7, a large difference.

Let us next examine the amino acid profiles, as follows.

Table 5.0
Amino Acid Profile Percentages:
Milks vs. Fruit Blends

Units: % of total of amino acids in profile,
for each food item.

Taurine: present in human milk, but not in fruit. Taurine is an important amino acid found in milk, but not in fruit. It is an essential amino acid for infants, and conditionally essential for adults. (Infants cannot synthesize adequate taurine.) Lack of taurine in infancy may cause vision defects and nervous system (brain) problems. See Gaull [1982] for information on taurine, also the section on taurine in the article Comparative Anatomy Brought Up To Date, available on this site.

Reference: Gaull G (1982) "Taurine nutrition in man." In: Taurine in Nutrition and Neurology (Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol. 139), Huxtable R, Pasantes-Morales H, New York: Plenum Press. (pp. 89-95)

GO TO NEXT PART OF ARTICLE

(Table 6.0--Carbohydrate [Sugar] Profile Percentages: Milks vs. Fruit Blends)

See Table of Contents for Section III - Challenging Fruitarian Defenses of the Theory

Back to Waking Up from the Fruitarian Dreamtime
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