Written over 20 years ago, the book Vegebody extols the benefits of a raw vegetarian diet. The information in the book is still just as true now as it was then, but the prevailing mindset of athletes has, if anything, swung in the opposite direction. Through a friend, I was able to track down the author, Charles Fraser, and interview him for Fruit of the Wise. The former Michigan State University Olympic Lifting coach is still a strong vegetarian at age 70. And the former writer for Herbert Shelton's Hygienic review and Weider publications is as outspoken as ever about health, diet, athletics and politics.

Editor's Note: This interview was conducted via email, so the responses are Charles' written word. True to his iconoclastic way of thinking, Charles does not necessarily spell according to convention. Charles writes, "Often I ask my correspondants to "tolerate my fonetic spellings" out of courtesy. I realize som of them mite be a little eye-jangling, but they are really quite common-sensical. The writer, thinker I admire above all others is the great G.Bernard Shaw. One of his interests was the reforming of the English Languaj. Becaus of the British Empire, and now the American influence on literature, history, and popular culture, English has becom the World Languaj. It is not official yet, but all the world's diplomats, heads of state, and educated people speak English. It is even required of all high school students in many countries.

I hav ben a student of forein languajes all my life, and recognizing the inconsistencies, antiquated spellings, silent letters, and foolish duplications, I realized that the languaj should be made "user frendly" for the world's millions who are learning our affluent tongue. English has conquered the world, and we should be mor sensitive to the forein speakers who admire our languaj enuf to study it. We shud internationalize the languaj and particularly fonetically to avoid the confusion which confound so many foreiners who are learning our rich speech. First hand knowledge with teaching English "as a second languaj" to immigrants has further motivated me to simplify the spelling of the language, and even internationalize som pronunciations."

OrganicAthlete: On March 20th, the FARM Campaign annually organizes a Meatout, touted as the world's largest grassroots diet education campaign. OrganicAthlete supports this campaign by featuring vegetarian athletes in our March newsletter. How long have you been a vegetarian? Why did you become vegetarian?

Charles Fraser: I became a vegetarian/fruitarian, mostly raw, in 1962 after reading the literature of the great HERBERT M SHELTON. I was 28 years old, a 220 pound (100K) competitive weitlifter (Olympic lifting), bodybuilder, and all-around athlete. I changed to the all plant diet overnite, waking up the morning after reading Shelton, a pursuaded "vegie". I ordered and read all the major works of Shelton and read them over that summer. I chose this eating way of life becaus I was an athlete always looking for the best possible diet for making athletic progress, preventing injuries, recovering from illness, and having euphoric health.

OA: Tell us a bit about your athletic background.

CF: I was physically active as a boy and teenager, constantly playing neihborhood football, baseball, track & field events. When I discovered weits, which were forbidden to youth in the late middle ages of the 40's and 50's, I became captivated. People today under the age of 50 cannot imagine the neanderthalic ignorance and stupidity of our parents, coaches, and athletes in those days, who thaut that weit-training wud make an athlete "musclebound", inflexible, slow, and un-coordinated. Kids like me had to look at the muscle magazines in the drug stores in a secretiv manner, just as people began to look at pornography in the 60's and 70's. I was not good enuf to play football or baseball in high school, and ran only the half-mile (800M) briefly in hi-school. I joined the Air Force during the Korean War in order to avoid being drafted and shot at by North Koreans or Chinans (Chinese). I was sent to The Armed Forces Languaj Institute at Monterey, California to study Russian. I discovered they had barbells at the base gym and began rigorously training 3 times a week for about 2 hours. In 6 months I gained 16 pounds of muscle on the conventional American diet served in the mess hall. At the end of that period in the spring of 1953 I had discovered the Olympic lifts (Press, Snatch, Clean & Jerk), and began enthusiastically training on them. The OL's are highly athletic, requiring whole-body coordination, speed, and balance, performed explosively with an exacting technique. It is, next to doing the pole vault, the most athletically demanding sport in the world. That is the reason that it is unpopular in America, along with the fact that our athletic system is over-dominated by team-sports, a "fun-and-games" socialization attitude that still persists in this country. The rest of the world is WAY AHEAD of us in its development of athletes in INDIVIDUAL ATHLETICS, such as gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, weitlifting, boxing, and most of the events in track & field. I began competing at Olympic Lifting while attending Michigan State U, and later Wayne State U (Detroit). In Detroit I trained at the YMCAs which had become a "hotbed" of Olympic lifting, partly because of the presence of Norbert Schemanski, the greatest weitlifter in American athletic history. Altho I had only slightly above average talent for the sport, I trained diligently, perfected the techniques, and won a state "B" championship in 1960. Encouraging all of this was the fact that I trained with state, national, and world & Olympic champions.

OA: As a bodybuilder, you know a lot about putting meat on your bones. Do you think it's necessary to eat the meat of other animals to build muscle? How about dairy products?

CF: Animals are not to be eaten, nor their excretions (products: milk, cheese, eggs). Man is a primate, a fruitarian/vegetarian, just as his cousins (brothers?) the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan. Even if the meat and milk producing industry (agri-business) cud prove that animal eating is healthful (an impossibility), the way it is poisoned with insecticides, herbicides, hormones, and drugs, in the farm-factory prisons, makes it dangerous for anyone to eat. We are now witnessing the epidemic of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and arthritis that has ben plaguing the conventional 98 percent of the population in the last 3-4 decades. This is all caused by eating flesh foods, and animal products. I hav written at length on this subject under the general subject of NATURAL HYGIENE.

OA: Many, in fact I might say most, athletes and sports nutritionists believe that meat is critical to athletic performance. Why do you think this perception still pervades?

CF: It pervades the athletic/strength sub-culture because of dietary illiteracy, and commercialism. The authors in the field are so programmed by their parents and coaches on the primacy of "animal protein" or complete protein, plus the bombardment of advertising to take protein supplements, that they are trapped into this mentality. They don't even hav the intellectual curiosity to investigate vegetarian claims and literature. Their minds are an impenetrable fortress of prejudice. They hav gone into the closet, while the diet/health revolution (such books as John Robbins' Diet for a New America) has passed them by.

OA: And now for the most common question of all, where does an athlete get his/her protein on a vegan diet?

Agri-business has ben so successful in perverting the minds of Americans about the necessity of a hi-protein diet (mostly animal protein) that their brains are protein-poisoned (I am only half-kidding here). Their question is moronic. The evidence is all around them, but they do not have the mental energy, common sense, or nativ intelligence to observe it and translate into their own behavior. How can they watch a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC program on gorillas, for example, who eat nothing but green leaves, celery, and fruit, and wonder why they weigh 300 to 500 pounds of bone and muscle, and are the strongest animal in relation to their size? How can they see a horse grazing on grass and weeds and not understand that their plant-food diet meets all the needs of this powerful, swift, beautiful animal? Why do they think chimpanzees and orangutangs thrive on fruit and greens? Why do they constantly see food and health articles in the newspapers and magazines touting vegetarian diets, and yet not allowing this information to penetrate their toxic cerebrum? That's it. They are toxic, lazy, ignorant, and not self directed. They are advertising directed: Pizza Hut, Burger King, Mac Donalds, Kentucky Fried Cancer, and coffee, coffee, and mor coffee, as well as alcohol in all its forms.

OA: In your experience coaching athletes, has it been challenging to educate them about proper plant-based nutrition?

CF: S0 challenging in my 40 years of coaching, that I do not mention the subject unless asked by a young athlete as to why I am a plant eater. If they are impressed by my answer, and ask for mor information, I will give them literature. But few do this, and most think I am merely an eccentric, so entrenched is the mythology of animal eating in our culture, Western Civilization, but especially in America.

OA: You've authored a book (Vegebody) and many articles on vegetarian bodybuilding. Though written over 20 years ago, I found the information still timely. Do you do much writing anymore? Is your book still available?

CF: Yes I still write on diet and health. I was particularly re-energized in this regard after discovering the literature of NATURE'S FIRST LAW, The Raw Food Diet. This literature is put out by the organization, NATURE'S FIRST LAW, by a fast growing organization in San Diego, www.rawfood.com. I read Steve Arlin's book RAW POWER in which he recounts his experience as a conventional bodybuilder converting to the rawfood vegetarian/fruitarian diet and completely rebuilding his body to a stronger and more muscular condition.

OA: Tell us about some of the responses you've had over the years from readers.

CF: When I sold my VEGEBODY thru mail-order, mostly via Weider's magazine, MUSCLE & FITNESS, I resieved letters from people all over the world praising my work. Also, the articles on nutrition (their were not many in the magazines, as you can imagine) generated mor mail than to any of the other writers. All the responses were positive, most commenting that such unconventional dietary principles were a refreshing breeze of truth to find in "those kinds of magazines".

OA: If an athlete came to you asked for help transitioning to a vegetarian/vegan diet, what would you suggest as the first step?

CF: First I wud advise him or her to go on a 5-7 day fast, drinking only purified water, while reading the Natural Hygiene and raw plant food literature. Then they wud begin eating TOTALLY RAW. No cookt food. Cookt food is destroyed food, or as the Nature's First Law people say, "cookt food is poison". They wud lose weit over several months no matter how much they eat, because their body wants to rebuild on the natural raw food, so it cleanses and expells the unhealthy cells and tissues. When that process ends, they will begin regaining healthy muscular weit as they continue their athletic and strength training.