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Half-Fast Metabolism
by Dr. Graham

There is a huge amount of misinformation being taught in the raw food world about
metabolism. This is quite understandable, as most people do not even truly understand
what their metabolism is. Some folks are teaching that the rate of your metabolism
determines just exactly which foods are best suited for you to eat. They teach that
people are born as either fast or slow metabolizers, and glorify the advantages of being
a fast metabolizer. They assert that the fast metabolizers burn through fuel more
rapidly than the slow metabolizers, making the fast metabolizers relatively more
e cient at digesting their food. Actually, the opposite is really true. It is easy to
understand if we use a car analogy. The car that gets more miles to the gallon is more
e cient than the car that gets fewer miles to the gallon. It is equally as easy to
understand that the person who utilizes the least fuel to accomplish any particular
task, i.e., the slow metabolizer, is the most e cient.

Many raw food teachers currently say that if you are a fast metabolizer you must eat in
a certain way, that is, to skew your diet so that fats (nuts, seeds, oils, avocados, olives,
etc.) make up an exceptionally high percentage of total calories (60-80%). If you do
not, they teach, you are destined to fail as a raw fooder. They also say that if you are a
slow metabolizer that you may possibly do better to slightly increase your
consumption of fruits, but that fruit (due to their abundant simple carbohydrates)
should still be minimized in the overall diet.

The fast metabolizers, it is taught, will only thrive on a high fat diet, as fruits will
prove to be insu cient in terms of fuel density, leaving the consumer constantly
hungry and su ering from the maladies (mistakenly) associated with the
overconsumption of fruit's sugars. Only the slowest metabolizers, it is taught, could
even hope to have a chance at possibly succeeding, healthwise, by utilizing fruit for
fuel. Often, athletes are brought into the example. If you are a serious athlete, then you
might be able to use more fruit if you are a very slow metabolizer, it is said, but
otherwise, it is too easy to overeat on fruit and it really should simply be avoided.

First, let's begin with a few terms. The term metabolism represents the sum of all of
the catabolic and anabolic processes that go on within your body. The anabolic
activities in your body are those whereby simpler structures are united to form more
complex ones. Anabolism represents the building processes in your body: growth,
repair, and all of the recombinant chemistry that goes on at the cellular and visceral
level. Catabolic activities are those whereby complex structures are broken down into
simpler ones. Digestion, osteoclastic activity (cells that break down bones), and the
conversion of glycogen to glucose are examples of catabolism in action. Metabolism is
not, in and of itself, a single function, but rather a representation of the sum total of
anabolism and catabolism that is going on in the body at any given time.

Author's note: It is the impression of this writer that slow in the sense it is used by
most raw food teachers seems also to be associated with negative themes such as
uncoolness and mental slowness. The imagery used in association with fast
metabolizers is sexy and fun, as in; fast cars and fast blondes.

Physical activity, or lack of it, determines metabolic rate

The term metabolism does have a useful meaning for us, however. We use it with
reference to the phrase, basal metabolic rate, or BMR. We use the two terms almost but
not quite as synonyms. The basal metabolic rate is a measure of the amount of fuel a
person utilizes, per unit of time, when awake and totally at rest. It does not include
such functions as physical activity, daily household chores, or even digestion. When
we use the word, metabolism we use it to mean BMR plus all the activities of the day.
We might say, He has a fast metabolism and she has a very slow metabolism. By this
we would mean that a person with a fast metabolism requires more fuel to perform the
same amount of anabolic and catabolic processes as the person with a slow
metabolism. This makes the fast metabolizer less e cient in their use of fuel. Either
way, however, the di erence is not very much, as the BMR rarely varies much more
than about plus or minus 5% from person to person of similar body size and design.
Body surface area, it turns out, is the biggest factor a ecting BMR. BRM in humans
accounts for the use of around 1000 calories per day.

What does a ect fuel use is the amount of physical exertion one performs. A sedentary
person may only use 200 calories per day in performing their daily functions whereas
someone going for a vigorous 4-hour hike could use 2000 calories. Professional
athletes often use 4000 calories solely for their daily training and Tour de France
riders are known to use over 10,000 calories on certain days of this grueling
competition. Hence it becomes easy to see that di erences in BMR, or metabolism, as
it is commonly referred to, plays an exceptionally small role in total calorie usage,
usually representing less than 100 calories out of 2,000 to 4,000 or even more.

The truly fast metabolizer is one who uses more calories per hour, throughout the day,
than the average person does. The more calories one utilizes in the course of the day,
the faster would be their total metabolism. It can safely be said that a t woman of
average physique uses about 1800 calories per day and the average-sized t man about
2400. Using the man for this example, it would mean that he averages about 100
calories per hour. We could therefore assert that a man who uses more than 100
calories per hour would be termed a fast metabolizer and a man who uses less than 100
calories per hour would be a slow metabolizer.

How Much Fat is Optimum?

The concept that fast metabolizers must consume more fat per calorie than slow
metabolizers has been taught as fact in raw food circles for many years. This is
contrary, however, to all we know about human health and nutrition. The Director of
Nutrition for the United States Olympic Teams says, the amount of fat (as a percentage
of total calories) required for the athlete remains the same, regardless of sport. The
only thing that varies, sport by sport and athlete by athlete, she asserts, is the total
number of calories required. Vegan doctors McDougall, Pritikin, Ornish, Campbell,
Klaper, Harris, Heidrich, Barnard, and many others, all internationally renowned for
their forward stance on nutrition are in agreement that 10% of calories from fat is the
outside, high-end acceptable human limit.

In the eld of raw nutrition, it is generally agreed that foods consumed in their raw
state provide a greater amount of viable nutrients as well as nutrients that are more
accessible, hence less food is needed than when one consumes cooked foods. This
should mean, therefore, that less total fat is required to ll the essential physiologic
roles it plays when we consume our foods in the raw. Why then are raw fooders told to
eat more fats The excessive consumption of fat(cooked or raw) has been
incontrovertibly linked to the development of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. The
more fat we consume, the higher the rates of these dread conditions. It has been
shown that when we consume more fats than we require we almost invariably
consume less carbohydrates than we require. Insu cient carbohydrate consumption
will result in feelings of fatigue, loss of strength, and a general lowering of vigor and
vitality.

Mind bending contradictions

At this point we have come to an unbridgeable contradiction. Fast metabolizers, those
who utilize the most fuel per hour, are supposedly the very people who will thrive on
the highest fat levels in their diet. While we are being told that only athletes can get
away with the high carbohydrate (fruit-based) diet, we know that athletes are the very
people who have the fastest metabolisms. Meanwhile, scienti c research
unwaveringly asserts that the more fat you consume the worse it will be for your
health.

Small cows eat small amounts of food relative to large cows. Active cows eat more food
than their sedentary counterparts, yet all cows eat primarily the same food. Fruits and
vegetables have been touted as the ultimate health foods for humans for over a
century, and have been the primary food of humankind throughout our existance.
Whether you are small or large, active or sedentary, fruits and vegetables remain as
the foods of choice for building human health. If one person needs to consume a
greater quantity of calories than another person, it simply means that they must eat a
greater quantity of food, not completely di erent foods. The Director of Nutrition for
the US Olympic Team states that the relative percentages of fat, protein and
carbohydrates in the athlete's diet should not vary; regardless of whether the athlete
runs the mile or the marathon, lifts weights or plays table tennis, or shoots skeet or
puts the shot. This author can only conclude that the low-fat, raw, vegan diet of whole,
fresh, ripe, raw, organic, plants remains the best and healthiest choice for all of us.

In case that is not enough of a contradiction to try to puzzle out, work on this one. It
has been repeatedly asserted that most raw fooders would do their best, healthwise,
using a diet that is composed primarily of fats. This assertion is based on the
assumption that most people are fast metabolizers. The Law of Averages says that as
we are working with a bell curve, only about 10% of the people would be truly classed
as fast metabolizers, 10% would be slow, and the rest would fall in the middle,
somewhere.

Resistance to change is futile

Do not be misled by half fast metabolism mumbo jumbo. Track your fat intake on any
given day and see for yourself just exactly how much of it is in your diet. There are
many web sites that make such monitoring of your caloronutrient intake quite easy. I
have found www. tday.com easy to use. Its primary advantage is that you can store
your records there with the option of making them available for public or private
viewing. Most people are shocked and amazed to discover that their diet is upwards of
50% fat by calorie. On average, I have found that raw fooders consume approximately
65% of their calories from fat, and only 25% from carbohydrates. This in light of the
fact that less than 10% fat is the recommended amount and 80+% carbohydrates is
near ideal. Is it any wonder that people have trouble sticking to their all-raw diets or
that they nd cooked carbohydrates alluring?

What do you eat? Where do you get your protein? Don't you get tired of the lack of
variety? These are the three common questions that vegetarians are asked by their
Standard, Westernized Diet friends. Eventually, the vegetarians learn good answers.
The same three questions are asked when we go vegan, this time, by our vegetarian
friends. We eventually learn appropriate responses. Go raw, and the same questions
come up again, this time from our vegan buddies. Why do they ask us these questions?
The answer is simple: your friends don't want to give up their old dietary habits and so
they are trying to prove you wrong. Is it any wonder that raw fooders resist switching
from the high fat diet they are following to a low fat raw version? Is it any wonder that
they ask the same questions' Do you have any doubt that the foot dragging is caused by
deeply rooted old habits, rather than a newfound thirst for health?
Raw fats are unquestionably better for us than cooked fats, and plant fats better than
animal fats. Still, the evidence is overwhelming that the high fat diet inevitably leads
to many disease states including but not limited to cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Raw fooders are not immune. Do not be fooled. Fruits and vegetables are health foods.
Everything else is just condiment.

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