The Fruit Cure: The story of extreme wellness turned sour

How one woman’s search to regain her health led her to the troubling outer fringes of the Queensland wellness industry. A university athlete, Jacqueline Alnes’s season was cut short by a series of inexplicable neurological symptoms. What started with a cough escalated to a collapse on the track and months of episodes that stole her ability to walk and even speak. Two years after quitting the team to heal, Alnes’s symptoms returned with a severity that led to months in a wheelchair but left doctors mystified. Desperate for answers, she turned to an online community centred around two wellness gurus – Queensland’s ‘Durianrider’ and his then-girlfriend ‘Freelee the Banana Girl’ – who claimed that a strict, all-fruit diet could cure conditions like depression, addiction, anxiety and vision problems. Alnes wasn’t alone. From all over the world, people in pain, doubted or dismissed by medical authorities, or seeking a miracle diet, turned to fruit in hope of a cure. In The Fruit Cure, Jacqueline Alnes takes readers on a spellbinding and unforgettable journey through the fringe world of fruitarianism. A powerful personal narrative, it is also a damning inquiry into the sinister strains of wellness culture that prey on people’s vulnerabilities through schemes, scams and diets masquerading as hope.