A lot of people eating a raw diet have trouble with their teeth and receding gums. I think this mainly has to do with people eating too much fruit. There are schools of thought that promote fruit as the ideal food for humans. Fruit is the ideal food for humans living in the Garden of Eden with a Garden of Eden consciousness. Our bodies are a reflection of our consciousness. We are no longer living in the Garden of Eden, most of us experience extreme stress, and fruit is not what it used to be. Thus, most of us need to look at other foods to stay balanced in the modern world.

Fruit has been hybridized over and over again to produce sweeter varieties. The modern red delicious apple is much sweeter than its original non-hybridized version. Hybridized fruit is nutritionally unbalanced and lower in life-force than the wild varieties. Many fruits are even lacking the seeds (life force) necessary to grow into fruit plants. To make matters worse, these nutritionally unbalanced fruits are picked weeks before they are ripe so they can be shipped around the world without rotting. Fruits picked before they are ripe have not extracted the full compliment of nutrients from the plants on which they grew. Thus, most grocery store fruits are nutritionally unbalanced and deficient in essential nutrients. These fruits are acid-forming in the body instead of alkalinizing. It is best to eat locally grown fruits in season. Stay away from seedless fruits.

Also, some people do not metabolize fruits well and need higher protein diets to keep their bodies alkaline. See Gabriel Cousins book “Conscious Eating” for a discussion of metabolic types. Gabriel’s work is the science behind the statement that our bodies are a reflection of our consciousness. Every body is different.

The other issues are that we live in a polluted, stress inducing world with half the oxygen content in the air that was present a mere 200 years ago. Stress and pollution acidify the body. Oxygen is necessary to keep the body alkaline. Also, most of us drink ultra-purified water. Note that although distilled water is pure, its pH is always acid. Carbon Dioxide in the air dissolves in distilled water forming carbonic acid. The actual pH of distilled water is usually around 5.7 (very acid). Drinking this water will pull alkalinizing minerals such as calcium and magnesium from the body in order to bring its pH up to the 7.4 of the blood stream. It is wise to add a small amount of unheated pure salt (www.americanbluegreen.com) to your purified water to remineralize it. The above factors generally make fruit nutritionally insufficient to keep our bodies alkaline for all but the most enlightened humans. A body running acid makes the saliva acid. Saliva should be neutral to alkaline. Acid saliva provides an environment conducive to the growth of bacteria which produce tooth decay and receding gums.

I have been a raw foods vegan for 9 years now. For the first 5 years as a raw food person, I ate 70-80% fruit. I was heavily influenced by the “fruit is the ideal food for humans” paradigm. Often times I didn’t brush my teeth for days, thinking that “They didn’t have tooth brushes in the Garden of Eden.” For 2 ½ years prior to my Pacific Crest Trail trip in 2001, I worked a high-stress job to save money for the walk. I also worked the same job for the year after the trip to pay off the debt I incurred on the trail. I drank only distilled or reverse osmosis water during this time period. All of these factors combined to produce an acid condition in my body. I experienced about 5 cavities in a two year period around the PCT walk (the year before and the year after). Interestingly, I didn’t experience any cavities on the walk. I attribute this to a lowering of my stress level and a consequent alkalinizing of my body on the trail. Also, I was consuming only mountain spring water on the trail, which is probably neutral to alkaline pH.

After the walk, I also began to notice slight receding in my gums. I decided it was time to investigate and began measuring my saliva pH using pH paper (www.ph-ion.com). I found it to be acid. I have changed my diet significantly since this discovery, focusing on moderate amounts of protein (via seeds, nuts and spirulina) and green foods. My saliva pH is now neutral (7.0) and I haven’t had a cavity in two years. My gums have not receded any further. I believe high quantities of sea vegetables and organically grown land vegetables grown in mineral-rich soils are necessary for health in most humans. And learn how to measure saliva and urine pH. This is one of the most important things you can do for your health (www.ph-ion.com).

Some products that helped me alkalinize when I discovered my acid condition were Hawaiian Spirulina, Healthforce Nutritionals Vitamineral Green (www.healthforce.com) and Angstrom mineral supplements (www.nunrg.net). I hope this information saves someone the trouble I experienced.