Two very different celebrity diets are in the news this week.
On the one hand is the story of Ashton Kutcher who ended up in the hospital with pancreas issues and severe pain following a fruitarian diet which was part of his efforts to “get into character” for his role as Steve Jobs in the soon to be released movie Jobs. Steve Jobs, the visionary founder of Apple and a known fruitarian, died in October 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer.
On the other hand is the amazing story of LA Lakers guard Kobe Bryant who is turning back the clock following a Traditional Diet all the while looking, feeling and playing better than ever at an age that most would consider to be way past his prime.
Just last month, Kobe became the first player in NBA history to score 30 or more points in six consecutive contests, this after turning 34 years of age which is rather ancient in NBA years.
Of his age defying performance, Kobe said:
“My wind feels even better. I feel like I can run all day long. A lot of that has to do with diet and being committed to it, and watching what I eat.”
Contrast this statement with what Ashton Kutcher said at the Sundance Film Festival last week about his pancreatic attack which caused him to be rushed to the hospital:
“The fruitarian diet can lead to, like, severe issues. I went to the hospital, like, two days before we started shooting the movie. I was, like, doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying, considering everything.”
The fruitarian diet is a subset of veganism. It includes fruits, nuts and seeds, without animal products, vegetables and grains. While this diet might make another species of primate extremely happy (one with lots of fur), it is in no way a Traditional Diet for a human and is a pertinent example of dietary modernism gone off the deep end.
According to Dr. Kaayla Daniel, evidence suggests that excess fructose consumption as would happen with anyone following fruitarianism puts stress on the pancreas and could lead to islet cell carcinoma, the type of pancreatic cancer suffered by Jobs.
While Ashton Kutcher was discovering the dangers of an extreme modern diet, Kobe Bryant is enjoying the fruits of a Traditional one.
LA Lakers trainer Gary Vitti says that the staples of Kobe’s diet include pasture based foods like grassfed beef and eggs from free-range chickens. Kobe makes every effort to avoid anything with corn syrup and his carbohydrate consumption has been scaled down to a very moderate level.
Focusing on getting traditional fats into his diet and the wrong fats out is of prime importance to Kobe. Vitti described the dangers of following a lowfat diet and why Kobe is not following the USDA Food Pyramid – in fact, he’s following the inverse:
“When they strip the fat, they strip all the nutrients with it. We don’t necessarily want to stay away from fats, but it has to be the right kind of fat.
The current science reverses the pyramid. The base of the pyramid is on the top. We’re not telling them to just eat fat – it has to be the right kind of fat. Pasture-grazed beef and products from that; you can eat butter, but it has to be pasture-fed. Not pasteurized, pasture-fed. There’s a big difference. Milk from a pasture-fed cow, cheese from a pasture-fed cow.”
No margarine or vegetable oil tub spreads for this NBA star. Kobe Bryant who is playing better than he did in his twenties and shattering NBA records in his mid-thirties eats butter!
But not just any butter, unpasteurized (raw) butter from pastured cows just like the healthy, robust traditional Swiss culture that revered it’s deep yellow/orange butter from cows grazing on the first spring grass.
Fruitarianism v. Traditional Diet: No Contest
The extreme physical results of two healthy young men about the same age consuming two very different diets is astonishing: elite athletic performance versus a doubled over in pain trip to the hospital ER.
A modern diet like fruitarianism in no way competes with the physical vitality imparted by Traditional Diet.
Pass the raw pastured butter please!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources: Kobe Bryant’s Diet Helps Maintain an Elite Level of Play
Ashton Kutcher Experiences Pancreatic Pain Playing the Role of Steve Jobs
what about the millions of people that did not make it that eat meat and a traditional diet come on is this the best you can do to make a comparison.please
They’re not talking about the ‘traditional’ (SAD) Standard American Diet. They are talking about a traditional diet from properly raised animals. The source of the meat makes a big difference.
Good Morning Sarah! Our 16 month WILL NOT eat store organic eggs but gobbles down the farm eggs. The little ones sure do have a distinguishing palate! They seem to know what is better for us than some adults!
Sadly the word ‘organic’ regarding our food supply is not of use as it was intended. Of course the corporations in control have seen to this. Personally, I would rather consume a small amount of known toxins, from a trusted source, rather than rely on a government label for saftey. Remember, these are the people that bring us fuoride, chem trails, bombs and guns, and give their stamp of approval on a host of illness causing medications.
Awesome, great for your 16 month old!
I always thought KerryGold Butter was a good source of pastured/grass fed butter but the ingredients list does say pasteurized cream. ?
KerryGold is made from cream that comes from pasture-fed cows, but it’s not raw. You would have to source raw butter locally…. So yes, it’s a good source but local raw butter would be ‘best’, if you can get it.
Following a traditional diet really makes a huge difference in how I feel. Since I cut out vegetable and started using traditional fats my health has improved tremendously.
When I switched to a more traditional diet I began to suffer from gallbladder/pancreas pain as my body was removing the garbage stuck for so long inside from the s.a.d. diet .at some points in the begining it came out in chunks..Now I only suffer if I eat something “standard”.. healing sickness?
Yes, if one has been eating lowfat for awhile, the gall bladder can become very inactive and when fats are eaten again, it can take an adjustment period. Go slow and use herbal bitters if necessary to stimulate bile production.
Sarah – On a note about butter I would like to share something. I normally buy KerryGold Butter every week, but about two weeks ago I noticed it is more “spreadable” and soft than previous packets. The consistency has changed, and even the paper is wrapped in a different way. Does anyone has noticed the same thing? I buy mine at Trader Joe’s (if that makes any sense). Thanks.
Who knows what might be happening there … food manufacturers play so many games and the deal is always changing so it’s hard to keep up with sometimes! A more spreadable brick butter from Kerry Gold is not a good sign though as that usually means there’s some sort of vegetable oil that is added to soften it. Best to stick with a local farm where you know exactly what you are getting. Butter is so easy to make (see my video on this) so if you can’t actually get local butter, then get cream and make it yourself.
its most likely a natural, seasonal change in grazing that creates higher butterfat content. kerrygold is pure 100% grass-fed butter either pasteurized and salted or cultured. nothing but sunlight and grass and no oils or additives. you can disregard “Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist” ‘s post, she dont know jack!
I’m just kidding Sarah, love your site! But dont talk smack about that Kerrygold!
So glad we never started the fruit juice habit with our kids. People are always amazed at the amount of raw milk I buy each week, but I quickly remind them, that this IS what we drink. There are no other beverages in our refrigerator.
Fruit juice from the store is liquid junk food.
we also have a fridge always stocked w/ raw milk, but never fruit juice. my kids get milk or water, and i push milk. they think juice is the stuff that comes out of my juicer. for their health, i know this is a phenomenal trade-off!!!
Kombucha or Water Kefir are THE BEST “juice/tea/pop” beverages to have around the house in addition to raw milk. Our bodies need all sorts of probiotics on a daily basis to stay healthy, why not use flavored drinks to get it into our systems? Kids love it and it really helps to be able to take something “special” to social gatherings while everyone else is sucking down HFCS.
Humans don’t digest milk from another animal very well. The lactose – milk sugars – cause us a lot of bloating and mucous formation for a reason. Animal milk is meant for growing their calfs quickly.
Ummm. No, you are talking about pasteurized milk. Raw milk has the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose in it … it basically digests itself with little to no effort on the part of the human digestive tract. And, by the way, if it weren’t for milk, you would even be here. Time for a history lesson. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/why-milk-matters-and-why-its-not-just-for-baby-cows/
Why is everyone blaming fruit for Ashton’s pancreatic issue? How long was he even eating a fruit-based diet? What was he eating for the decades prior to this diet? I am sure whatever his diet was like before would have to be to blame and not the fruit. We are making HUGE assumptions.
Take a look at some of these very intelligent man’s articles on sugar:
http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2012/10/fructose-is-glucose-part-iv.html
“High fat diets tend to raise blood NEFA levels, moderately, but the resultant insulin resistance is not readily reversible due to the accumulation of lipid metabolites inside cells, which, in one way or another, degrade the insulin receptor, producing glucose intolerance and apparent diabetes.”
Yes! Thank you for posting the link Janelle.
I love milk and butter (we can’t always get it raw or grassfed), but I also love fruit. There are some days when we eat fruit with our meals and no veggies. But we do eat grains, meat and fat with it, as well…everything in moderation. It’s easy to eat, it’s sweet and has awesome nutrients in it. I DO love butter on toast though. 🙂
WOW! This just made my Thursday! We’re in our thirties and feel WAY healthier than we did in our twenties, post-traditional diet days. My husband has gotten much better definition from his workouts while drinking raw milk. To see this on such a public level is just awesome.
*pre*-traditional diet days!
Makes me re-think how much fruit my kids eat…and wish it wasn’t illegal to buy/sell raw dairy products in our state 🙁 Guess I will need to start raising goats myself!
Fruit and fruit juice is seriously overrated as a “healthy” part of the diet. Traditional Northern European cultures ate little if any fruit.
You can get typically get around the legality issue if you use a co-op or CSA. Depends what state you live in. In the Midwest it’s pretty easy to get.
Thanks Kyla! We live in MD…our CSA won’t touch the topic with a 10 ft pole. It’s crazy how strict they are. I hear stories of people using secret passwords to pick up their raw milk from the back of flower shops…you would think they were trying to by drugs 🙁 I have asked around locally with no luck, but I am determined to keep trying.
Hi Michelle,
Are you part of your local Weston A. Price Chapter? I’m sure someone from that group could lead you in the right direction. It is a sweet sweet drug!!
Here in NC it is very hard to get it as well. Some of the local farmers will sell it “for animal consumption only” as is a law here, but it is still very difficlut unless you know someone that knows someone that has a cow…
Where I live it is illegal to purchase raw dairy for human consumption, but sellers have managed to get around it by selling it as “bath milk”. I’ve recently found a great farm that’s starting buying groups soon, and on their website they said they’ve got “raw bath milk” so I’m extremely excited by this (up until now I could find NO source of raw, healthy milk in my state). My thought was to get a goat too (once I’ve moved somewhere with a bigger yard), but it may be that I don’t have to 😉 (although I probably will… raw milk can be super expensive, and if I could get my own raw goat’s milk that could save some money).
I would not buy into the information in this article at all. Fruit acids cleanse the human system and are totally essential for anybody pursuing great health. In Ashton’s case, he probably was feeling the ill effects of detoxification process…which can be quite uncomfortable, especially if one’s system is very toxic from animal products, chemicals and environmental toxins. Our physiology is not designed to eat meat – plain and simple. Our teeth are not made to tear flesh; they are made to grind and mash up food. Our digestive tracks are very long and are made to breakdown fiber. We don’t have the proper stomach acids to breakdown animal flesh… that is why humans have to cook it. The science that establishes that we are designed to eat plants has been totally established. Don’t buy into the meat & diary industry propaganda.
Why do vegans always attribute a detox reaction to getting sick eating vegan? I think its the B12 deficiency that prevents them from thinking straight or even logically. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/what-the-health/
https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-china-study-more-flaws-exposed-in-the-vegan-bible/
https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/blue-zones-baloney/