I’m reading a very entertaining book called The Fruit Hunters right now, and so far it has seemed fairly factually accurate. I got to this passage in Chapter 6, “Fruitarians,” though, and it just sounded so ridiculous I couldn’t believe it.
“But isn’t an avocado a fruit? Absolutely, say a splinter denomination called **rockguacamolians **who eat only avocados seasoned with powdered asteroid dust.”
Rockguacamolians? I looked it up on the Internet, also spelled as “rockguacamolean,” and looked up “asteroid dust avocado diet,” “avocado only diet,” etc.–zero hits.
Has anyone heard of such a thing, or can you find me a cite?
Either the author was kidding or somebody was yanking his crank. Assuming such a diet was feasible (which I doubt), where are they getting the asteroid dust?
Well, first there’s the silliness of the notion implied by this response - the suggestion that avocados are not fruit.
Then there’s the physical impossibility of humans surviving on only avocados. Smells like fiction to me. I doubt you’ll find rockguacamolians anywhere but in the author’s imagination.
re: your first point, this was actually taken out of context–he was at some fruitarian convention where the fruitarians were making fun of someone for claiming to be fruitarian yet eating avocados. The author spent a previous chapter pointing out that many things that we wouldn’t consider fruits are actually fruits… tomatoes being the tip of the iceberg.
As for your second point, the whole chapter is about fruitarians–people who eat only fruit–I’ve met a couple of these myself, in real life. I’m sure they’re not particularly healthy, but they are able to survive on their bizarre diets. At least avocados have fats in them, unlike many other fruits.
I’d be more interested in where they would get the asteroid dust, if they were perhaps some kind of weird doomsday cult and had bought up a bunch on eBay or something…
plus, the etymology of “rockguacamolian” just sounds kind of ridiculous. Why not “petravocadotarians” or something slightly more dignified-sounding? I’m sure if they are eating only avocados, the lime juice/cilantro/tomato/cumin to create actual guacamole would be off limits.
But it seemed to me like an odd glitch in a book with a lot of interesting facts that so far have checked out otherwise.
Maybe I’m missing your point. I was saying in my response to Gary T that 1) actually, the author does know that an avocado is a fruit, his question “But isn’t an avocado a fruit?” was rhetorical and I quoted him out of context, and 2) actually, there are many people who live on fruit alone. Not very healthily, but eating just avocados wouldn’t kill you (very quickly, anyway). Therefore, I don’t think “rockguacamolians must be fake because you can’t only eat avocados” is a valid argument to prove they’re not real.
Living on fruit alone has some sort of theoretical underpinning. At least I’m assuming that the purpose is to eat only what the plants “offer up” and what won’t kill the plant to harvest.
Saying an avocado isn’t fruit is factually incorrect, but doesn’t undermine the theory behind the -arianism. Saying you’ll only eat avocadoes has no theoretical underpinning that I can see. It’s just reversing the behaviour of some fruitarians who have lost sight of the reason for their -arianism and who have gotten caught up in the details.
It is silly. Add in the asteroid dust, and it’s silly for the purpose of mocking some specific people. It doesn’t matter whether either fruitarianism or rockguacamoleism will provide nutrients. It’s that rockquacamoleism has no theoretical underpinning. Breatharianism has a more coherent backup, and that will kill you dead.