Mangoes are not only flavorful, juicy, and beautiful! The tropical fruit is an incredibly healthy and nutritious food – a superfood! Or a superfruit...
Author - Martina Spaeni, MSc
"We are frugivores - specialized fruit-eaters!"
It was passion at first sight when I came across the intriguing concept that humans are adapted to a high-fruit diet, similar to chimpanzees. As someone trained in evolutionary biology and anthropology, I had to start digging deeper! I have been seeking knowledge and health by connecting the dots for over a decade - and finally found the missing piece! And, after seeing enough evidence that convinced me, I started eating a frugivore diet to test it on myself... and saw changes in health I had never imagined.
Now, my main focus is to find the best answer to the question:
Are We Frugivores?
My educational background and core experiences are:
Sciences:
M.Sc. in Biology, Ecology, University of Zurich, UZH
B.Sc. in Biology, University of Zurich
Nutrition Science at Stanford Center for Health Education
Health:
Courses in Detoxification and Mitochondrial Health
Overcoming my autoimmune condition naturally
Growing up in a family founding a business focused on natural remedies and herbalism.
Fruits and foods:
Learning about our frugivorous ancestry also means discovering the tropics as our natural habitat. While I grew up in cold Europe,
I consider myself lucky that living in Brazil in my early adulthood has introduced me to the diversity and beauty of tropical fruits, foods, and herbs. I now travel often to Africa to visit extended family and dive into the local markets with a bounty of fruits and herbs. I also have to find ways to find tropical frugivorous foods in colder climates, which makes me very well aware of the struggles and shortfalls of raw living in the "wrong" environment.
My great passion is exploring the ancestral, original ecological niche of humans and the potential to self-regenerate within this paradise habitat we are biologically adapted to. I connect scientific studies with holistic, ancient knowledge and real-life experiences.
I aim to raise awareness of the toxic overload of the world and our bodies and how to detox by seeking the ecological niche and diet we are adapted to. We desperately need this reliable and easy-to-use compass within the confusing jungle of artificial dietary concepts and profit-driven (mis)information in health and even in alternative health. Know your ecology... and finally, everything makes sense. To heal our bodies, we need to find out who we are in nature without letting our cultural filters get in the way.
I'm grateful to be given the opportunity to use my educational background in biological sciences, combined with natural healing knowledge, common sense, and intuition, to put out information to the best of my ability.
I'm 100% independently working in service to those ready for great change toward a loving, regenerating world.
Martina
Are humans and apes descendants of a common ancestor? Are humans still apes? Or are we all created, and humans have a unique role in this world? This...
Greens, especially leafy greens, play an essential nutritional role in the natural human diet. Most animals eat green plant matter. Even obligate carnivores do...
Leafy greens are an important part of the natural human diet. But greens are not greens! Not all greens are meant for human consumption, and some greens...
As members of a tropical frugivorous species, we know the regenerative power of tropical fruits. But we might also start looking into tropical leaves, which...
Dairy is a mysterious and controversial food… why do humans consume the milk of another species? Something that no other species does in nature –...
Tropical fruits are often perceived as a tasty “bag of sugar and water” which should be seen as a treat… but they are so much more than that...
Getting enough iron from plants can be challenging if we do not get the full picture of iron sources and absorption. There are some factors we need to know...
When we think about human evolution, the image of hairy, human-like creatures with spears hunting in the open savanna comes to mind. After all, it’s what...
Non-heme iron is known as “plant iron” and is characterized by relatively low bioavailability: Plant iron is absorbed less than iron from animal...