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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.
The 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.
The 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.
Freelee 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.
Tanned 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.
Durianrider, 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.
Freelee 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.
I was one of them.
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