The Fruit Cure

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“an engaging story” – The Wall Street Journal

“lucid and elegant” – The Washington Post

“A deeply compelling read … Spellbinding ….” – BookPage

“Alnes’s interweaving of personal experience, diligent reporting and wide-ranging cultural history make The Fruit Cure 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.” – New Scientist

“Her journey from desperation to self-acceptance is moving and well rendered. In the crowded medical memoir field, this stands out.” — Publishers Weekly

“Like an episode of Maintenance Phase meets the essay collection The Empathy Exams, The Fruit Cure 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.” – Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl

“The Fruit Cure 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.” – Christine Yu, author of Up To Speed

“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.”—Devin Kelly, author of In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen and Blood on Blood.

“The Fruit Cure 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.” Casey Johnston, editor, She’s A Beast Newsletter and author, Liftoff: Couch to Barbell