Pay Attention to Type - we are not all the same.

by Ela Harrison Gordon
(Alaska)

Although I love Thoreau, I find the quote above annoying, because we are not oxen, nor do we have all the stomachs that they have for extracting protein. And oxen aside, we just have to look around to see that humans differ from one another metabolically also. There are plenty of people who _load up_ on SAD foods and are lean and (to all appearances) healthy. (Not that this will last longterm, and not that I would be if I ate that way!) Some people have allergies to foods. Etc. And some people _do_ need more protein than others.

I feel strongly about this because I bought into all the 'don't buy into the protein myth' stuff when I first went raw, ate mostly sweet fruit for years and continued to have my lifelong troubles with building muscle and stamina (I have celiac and other digestive issues, had a serious eating disorder, never ate enough protein growing up), which were only improved by eating animal products.

It is worth paying attention to your metabolic type. Gabriel Cousens shows how you can apply the insights as a vegan and live-foodist in 'Conscious Eating' and "Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine.' I wish I had been open to what is offered in those books when I started out: I wanted to be a sweet-fruitarian partly because they seem easier to digest but it turns out that I'm a fast-oxidizer/parasympathetic. I was in a deficiency situation leading to malabsorption issues and by continuing to avoid protein because 'we don't need it,'I believe I deepened the deficiency and malabsorption situation, also exacerbated blood sugar imbalances.

Bottom line: some of us need to pay more attention to protein than others: it's worth knowing if you are one such. But: it is perfectly within reach to do this as a live-foodist, so long as you address absorption issues. I am feeling so heartened by my success so far in getting protein from algaes, hemp protein powder, sprouted lentils, bee pollen, nut and seed mylks and yogurts (taking my enzymes, of course), am researching cleanses to further help with absorption, and feel like live and plant-based foods may once again be in reach for me.