{"product_id":"the-fruit-cure-isbn-9781685890759","title":"The Fruit Cure","description":"\"lucid and elegant\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A deeply compelling read ... Spellbinding ....\" — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \"Her  journey from desperation to self-acceptance is moving and well  rendered. In the crowded medical memoir field, this stands out.\" —\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA powerful critique of the failures in our healthcare system and an  inquiry into the sinister strains of wellness culture that prey on  people’s vulnerabilities through schemes, scams, and diets.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJacqueline Alnes was a Division One runner during her freshman year of college, but her season was cut short by a series of inexplicable neurological symptoms. What started with a cough, escalated to Alnes collapsing on the track and experiencing months of unremembered episodes that stole her ability to walk and speak. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo years after quitting the team to heal, Alnes’s symptoms returned with a severity that left her using a wheelchair for a period of months. She was admitted to an epilepsy center but doctors could not figure out the root cause of her symptoms. Desperate for answers, she turned to an online community centered around a strict, all-fruit diet which its adherents claimed could cure conditions like depression, eating disorders, addiction, anxiety, and vision problems. Alnes wasn’t alone. From all over the world, people in pain, doubted or dismissed by medical authorities, or seeking a miracle diet that would relieve them of white, Western expectations placed on their figures, turned to fruit in hopes of releasing themselves from the perceived failings of their bodies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e, Jacqueline Alnes takes readers on a spellbinding and unforgettable journey through the world of fruitarianism, interweaving her own powerful narrative with the popularity and problematic history of fruit-based, raw food lifestyles. For readers plagued by mysterious symptoms, inundated by messages from media about how to attain “the perfect body,” or caught in the grips of a fast-paced culture of capitalism, \u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e offers a powerful critique of the failures of our healthcare system and an inquiry into the sinister strains of wellness culture that prey on people’s vulnerabilities through schemes, scams, and diets masquerading as hope.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Next Big Idea Club’\u003c\/i\u003es January 2024 Must-Read Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e Top Ten Books of January 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA\u003ci\u003e SheReads\u003c\/i\u003e Most Anticipated Memoir of 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAn \u003ci\u003eInsideHook\u003c\/i\u003e 10 Books You Should Be Reading in January\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003ean engaging story\" \u003c\/i\u003e- \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\"lucid and elegant\" - \u003cb\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A deeply compelling read ... Spellbinding ....\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Alnes’s interweaving of personal experience, diligent reporting and wide-ranging cultural history make \u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e an engaging, clear-eyed, often vulnerable read that goes a long way to  make sense of why so many of us seem to find the simple act of eating so  fraught.\" - \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew Scientist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Her journey from desperation to self-acceptance is moving and well rendered. In the crowded medical memoir field, this stands out.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Publishers Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Like an episode of \u003ci\u003eMaintenance Phase\u003c\/i\u003e meets the essay collection \u003ci\u003eThe Empathy Exams\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e brings both rigorous reporting and fearless self-examination to bear on questions far beyond health, athletics, wellness, and food. What Alnes is interested in here is nothing less than the mysterious relationship between our thinking minds and our physical selves and the essential joyful horror that is having a human body.\" - \u003cb\u003eEmma Copley Eisenberg\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Third Rainbow Girl\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e is an eye-opening, at turns heartbreaking, and long overdue reckoning of wellness culture—the scammy cures, miracle diets, and broken systems that operate like an elaborate MLM scheme, ensnaring people in an endless pursuit of promised cures. Part memoir, part cultural critique, Alnes takes us on a relatable journey through the world of fruitarianism and introduces us to a cast of complicated characters behind the raw food lifestyle. It’s a fantastic look at wellness and diet culture and the influencer economy, all done with nuance, humor, and empathy.\" - \u003cb\u003eChristine Yu\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eUp To Speed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \"Weaving a deeply vulnerable personal narrative into a larger historical story of dieting, harmful pseudoscience, and trendy health fads, Alnes connects our current societal obsession with control to a long history of the constant betrayal of people’s simple desire to get better. I have never been more compelled by a book, and I have never felt more moved by the offering of a self — honest, tender, and vulnerable — that Alnes presents.\"—\u003cb\u003eDevin Kelly\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eIn This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBlood on Blood.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Cure\u003c\/i\u003e presents a type of human trajectory we don’t consider enough: how we took the emerging cultural possibility of being selective about how we eat, and how we might manage our well-being through diet, and turned it back into an unhealthy and extreme practice. Alnes’s book is an eye-opening journey into how isolating the pursuit of health can be when our society does not keep an open mind and inclusive practice that prioritizes care, and the dangers that come with the push toward individualism.\" \u003cb\u003eCasey Johnston\u003c\/b\u003e, editor, She’s A Beast Newsletter and author, \u003ci\u003eLiftoff: Couch to Barbell\u003c\/i\u003eJacqueline Alnes is a writer, runner, and assistant professor of creative writing. Her work has appeared in publications like \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times, Guernica, Jezebel, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, Ploughshares, Tin House, Electric Literature\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e. She has a PhD in creative writing from Oklahoma State University and an MFA in nonfiction from Portland State University. She teaches at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.BEFORE THE DEFAMATION LAWSUIT, THE CUPS OF COCONUT sugar poured into banana smoothies, the sexual assault allegations, and the dissolution of what was once a dream, there was a man and a woman. Acne covered the woman’s face and shoulders and chest. Her gut was inflamed, a symptom of systemic candida. The man, whose father had passed from cancer, was sick of the lies. Sick of the fries. Sick of rubbing thighs or listening to MLM gurus with dollar$ in their eyes. And so the man and the woman separated good food from bad. They called the good food Raw, and the bad food they called Murder, Torture, Junk, and Harm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man and the woman worshipped what the earth yielded, an abundance of fruits and greens plucked ripe from their vines and stalks and trees. They ate dozens of bananas per day, and mangoes, dragon fruit, persimmons, oranges, peaches, watermelon, papaya, and more. Piles of durian crowned the man’s bed. And the woman lay on the ground in a bikini, hair spilling across her face, boxes and boxes of dates surrounding her toned body as the man looked on. The man pressed the fruit between his fingers, saying squishy, date sugar, nutrition, nutrient-dense, and neither were ashamed.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe man and the woman held the knowledge of good and evil; they could discern between the sweet flesh of a sun-ripened pineapple and plastic bags filled to the brim with animal blood. They knew that water and carbohydrates in the blood equaled beauty; fat in the blood, ugly. Pure thoughts came from drinking water. With this knowledge, the man and the woman created a website. The man and the woman painted the header with a faded image of browning bananas in the sun. They added green trim to a white background. They added an image of spotty bananas. They renamed themselves Durianrider and Freelee The Banana Girl. With that, the 30 Bananas a Day movement began.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFreelee and Durianrider invited their followers to a fruit farm in Cairns, Australia, where there was a garden and the garden was good. From the garden came tatsoi, a green with leaves like flattened lily pads; Black Russian tomatoes; a bowl of pea-sized cherry tomatoes; tall sprigs of dill; cos lettuce; and sweet leaf skimmed from the stalk. People multiplied, journeying from all around the world. They gathered around a picnic table where the garden’s bounty was arranged. Sun overhead, they ate until they were satiated.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTanned and wiry, the people bore gifts: They whacked a cleaver against a rod of sugarcane before twisting it and twisting it, milking the juice into a bowl. They broke open the scaly green skin of a jackfruit with their fingers. They sifted, smashed, and sieved coconut until it turned to oil, and they slathered it behind their ears, on their shoulders, and into the palms of their hands. They jackhammered avocado, mango, pineapple, and banana in a large pot, poured the golden mixture into a pitcher, drank from it, and said wow.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDurianrider, standing before the small crowd of disciples, said, “People just want to feel good.” And it was so. There, on the farm, the people slept in tents; the people woke up and ate coconuts; the people went down to the creek for a swim; the people did yoga beneath the limbs of an ancient tree; the people walked the walk and talked the talk and ate raw food and only raw food. No one snuck down the road for a hamburger.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFreelee and Durianrider posted footage of toned bodies, testimonies about healing from chronic illness, and images of an abundance of fruit to their site. Through raw food and raw food alone, their followers turned from flab to fab. From tragic to magic. From around the world, people watched and saw that the movement was good. Like fruit flies lured by the sweet stench of something overripe, people desperate to heal from eating disorders, to cure illnesses, to save the animals, to find community, and to feel young again were drawn to 30 Bananas a Day.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI was one of them.","brand":"Melville House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303199396069,"sku":"NP9781685890759","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781685890759.jpg?v=1767739440","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-fruit-cure-isbn-9781685890759","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}