21-year-old Dane Nash, from Bristol, UK, gets around 80% of his daily calorie intake from bananas, consuming up to 150 yellow fruits every week. Despite doctors’ warnings, the young “fruitarian” claims that the banana-heavy diet provides “amazing health, endless energy and fantastic all-round well-being”.
Dane embraced the vegan lifestyle two years ago, as a way to solve his acne problem. Before that, he had tried vegetarianism, but after doing some research, he decided that going raw was the way to go. He says that all other species consume raw food for a reason – it’s good for them – but people at one point started cooking various foods, which really isn’t very good for us. For about half a year, Nash has been on a raw-only diet, with only a few slip-ups, like the occasional cooked rice. He gets most of his nutrients from ample quantities of bananas, mixes with lots of spinach and other leafy vegetables, as well as berries.
Photo: BBC video screengrab
The fruitarian told BBC that his typical daily diet consists of two large smoothies (8 to 12 bananas blended with half a pound of spinach) in the morning, a lunch of berries, pears or other fruit blended with another 8 to 12 bananas, and, in the evening, a big salad (at least a pound of leafy greens and other vegetables). All of this amounts to around 3,000 calories per day, which is above the daily recommended intake, although you couldn’t really tell by looking at him.
“Bananas are the best way to go,” Nash said. “They’re the best tropical fruits that are readily available in the UK. They’re cheap, they’re consistent in terms of calories, and they’re consistent in terms of nutrients, too. This diet has helped me a lot in taking control of my health and my life, and I’m now healthier than ever. I cannot recommend it enough.”
Photo: Dane Nash/Facebook
The Bristol-based fruitarian consumes up to 150 bananas per week, so he always a supply of them at home. He buys four or five 18kg crates of yellow fruits every month, and likes to eat them when they are nice and ripe. “They should be brown and spotty. They should almost look like they’re about to go off,” he says. “When they’re like that, they’re the sweetest that they can be, and they’re soft as well.”
Although they make up around 80% of his daily calorie intake, Dane Nash also supplements his diet with Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D, as well as spirulina, which he claims contains very nutrient that the body needs.
Nutrition experts don’t really agree with Dane’s diet, claiming that it is missing important elements, and most importantly, diversity.
“This diet lacks very important nutrients, particularly protein and fat, micronutrients (especially fat soluble nutrients) – and, very importantly, variety,” said Lucy Patterson, a Nutritional Therapist at Southville Nutrition Clinic in Bristol. “There is a healthier way to eat a vegan diet, but unfortunately this person is missing some significant aspects of it.”
