Dr. Fuhrman's rules

Right now I'm working on adding as many raw foods to my family's diet as I can. While Dr. Fuhrman isn't a proponent of totally raw foods, he knows what he's talking about. So on my own road of discovery I'm trying my hardest to follow his three simple rules for health excellence:

Rule #1: Avoid concentrated calories, excess nutrients and refined foods. These include sugar, salt, white flour, oils, cheese, butter and margarine.

Rule #2: Eat whole foods, raw, steamed or made into soup. Eat as many vegetables as possible. They should form the cornerstone of your diet.

Rule #3: Eat lots of fresh fruit, especially berries.

Basically - he advocates discontinuing or weaning yourself off of caffeine, salt, alcohol, sweets, butter, cheese, processed foods and soft drinks and all teas except non-caffeinated herbal teas.

That doesn't seem so hard, does it?



My problems (besides the fact that I love red wine and tequila):

.... well, I dehydrate my own fresh fruit. That means the calories in the fruit are more concentrated than natural. I wonder if those are supposed to be avoided as well. Of course dehydrated, packaged, sugared fruits available at supermarkets are excess, concentrated, empty calories... but are my own dried fruits in the same category?

... many of the raw food books I'm reading advocate celtic sea salt. In fact, they use it in tons of recipes. How much salt is actually required by the human body? Celtic sea salt contains so many healthy micronutrients so when we use it, that's the kind we use. How much do I need?

... I love dates. They're the perfect dessert. They're unbelievably sweet - but it's a natural sweet. The sugars are (of course) not refined so contain all of the micronutrients that we don't even know about yet. They're used in most of the raw desserts I read about. I wonder how many is too many.. (or if that's possible.) I hope not!