Deep Nutrition and Mindful Consumption
How are daily choices affect personal, social and planetary health

by Erik Adams

What we consume has a significant impact on all aspects of our being.
The quality, quantity, types of food as well as the manner in which they are prepared and consumed all influence our state of physical health, mental and emotional wellbeing and spiritual consciousness.
More broadly, our food choices affect directly and indirectly the wellbeing of every other being in the delicate interdependent web of life on the planet.

What is Food?

Food can be defined in many ways.
Buddha talked about there being 4 kinds of food or nutriments :
edible food, sense impression food, food of desire or volition and consciousness food.
He recognised that we are ‘fed’ in many ways other than by just edible matter. We are also nourished by experiences or sensory impressions that we consume, the thoughts we entertain, and by the fruits of our actions and motivations.

Edible Food

On the gross physical level, food is that which gives us the energy and necessary nutrition to sustain the full variety of bio-chemical processes that occur within us.

A diet of material foods that are lacking in the appropriate nutrition for our life processes will cause deficiencies, malnutrition and a physiology that is compromised leading to illness, disease and eventually death.

Malnutrition remains the number one killer on the planet today, with an estimated 60 million people dying of starvation every year . Chronic malnutrition is, according to Cousens, also the number one health problem for the living, with the United Nations estimating that one half of the global population are malnourished and 700-900 million are severely malnourished.

When basic physical nutritional needs are not met, it becomes very difficult to develop ones intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacities, inhibiting the development and wellbeing of whole societies and often leading to conflict over resources and more suffering. Poor nutrition also leaves one susceptible to contracting other diseases or dying from them. Infectious diseases such as diarrhoeal diseases, measles, or respiratory illnesses would rarely kill people in industrialised countries whereas they kill millions every year in countries where people’s immune systems are weakened from malnourishment.

Malnourishment from under-nourishment is most common in poorer, undeveloped countries that lack basic access to food, clean water and sanitation. The diseases that afflict these societies are generally infectious diseases that could easily be eradicated if these basic needs were met. These diseases have often been called ‘diseases of poverty’ as they have all but disappeared in developed countries for this reason.. However, a different form of malnutrition has emerged in the developed world bringing with it a whole other range of afflictions.

Diseases of poverty/affluence – underconsumption vs. overconsumption

Whilst cases of malnutrion or deficiencies do occur in wealthy countries in those with poor or unbalanced diets, by far the more notable effect of food consumption has been the impact of over consumption or nutritional excess. This has accompanied a steady move away from traditional natural whole foods to highly processed, fat and sugar laden foods of convenience and taste.

Murray describes how “the twentieth century saw a marked change in the pattern of diseases in the industrialised countries. Infectious diseases, which had been responsible for about 50 percent of all deaths in the nineteenth century were gradually replaced by heart disease, cancer and other degenerative diseases as the principal causes of death”

While the reduction in infectious diseases could be attributed to improvements in sanitation, medical treatment and immunisations, the diseases that they were replaced by were unusual in that they were not prevalent to any great degree in non-industrialised countries.
Further investigation revealed an extensive list of now common ailments that are primarily caused by the diet and lifestyle changes that have emerged within affluent industrialised societies in the last 100 years.

These diseases include : constipation, hiatus hernia, appendicitis, haemorrhoids, coronary heart disease, cancer of the colon, breast, prostate, lung and ovaries, kidney stones, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, gout, rheumatoid arthritis and hypertension.

The China Study

John Robbins in “Healthy at 100” describes the China study as “the most ambitious international scientific inquiry ever undertaken in medical history dealing with lifestyle factors and human health”. Over a twenty year period beginning in the 70’s , researchers from Universities in China, USA and the UK undertook a nationwide intensive survey measuring the health, diet and lifestyle of 10’s of thousands of Chinese across 65 different counties representing differing climates, topography, cultural groups and levels of industrialisation. They were particular interested in uncovering whether peoples dietary choices in different parts of China matched the very different regional death rates from cancer and other diseases.

The first thing that emerged from the study was a definite correlation between economic development and the prevalence of the different diseases of affluence and poverty. The wealthier and urban dwelling Chinese who lived in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai had much higher rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes than those living in traditional villages in the country’s southwest where heart disease was practically non-existent. The significant difference between the two populations lifestyle was that the affluent city dwellers had increased their consumption of oils and animal products markedly, meat consumption being seen as a signifier of higher social status and wealth.

Other studies such as those undertaken by dentist Weston. A Price have confirmed a similar pattern of the emergence of diseases of affluence when populations switch from their traditional whole foods, low calorie, plant based diet to one of much higher levels of animal proteins, heated oils and hydrogenated fats, highly processed foods, and refined carbohydrates such as white flour, white rice and sugar. Other lifestyle factors, including a sedentary lifestyle, higher levels of stress and the increased toxicity of the environment and food (pollution, pesticides etc.) play a supporting role.

Effects of Food Production and Preparation Methods

“Eating establishes humankind’s most primordial bonds with the natural world. Because it utilises the senses, eating, more than any other human experience, brings us to our fullest and most intimate relationship with the environment. In recent generations this intimate relationship has been shattered by a food production system that has profoundly separated us from nature and from those working the land”
(Andrew Kimbrell, Fatal Harvest).

In a truly holistic model of nutrition, food cannot be separated from the methods by which it is produced, which intrinsically affect the quality of the food, and the environment in which it is produced.

The modern era has seen an increased contamination of our foods through artificial production methods creating effects previously unseen in times of more natural production. The commercialisation and industrialisation of food production has transformed how food is grown, transported, refined and preserved. With economic imperatives at the forefront, agribusiness has sought higher and higher yields, and developed techniques and preservatives to extend shelf life and maximise profits. Food has been transformed into a commodity rather than the staple of life.

Foods now commonly contain the by products of industrial agriculture, including residues from the use of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, fungicides and pathogens and preservatives introduced by processing.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), “Harmful pesticide residues can contaminate the environment and accumulate in ecosystems, thus entering the human food chain. Some older pesticides were designed to be persistent and are thus found worldwide in water and soil. Newer pesticides degrade more quickly, but are often more acutely toxic. Some of these pesticides may cause cancer or damage the nervous, reproductive or immune systems after short term, high level exposures system”.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 112 currently registered pesticides are known, probable or suspected carcinogens. Pesticides can encourage cancer causation through several ways including the promotion of abnormal cell proliferation, the direct alteration of DNA and the disruption of the immune system.

In Belgium researchers discovered that women diagnosed with breast cancer are six to nine times more likely to have the pesticides DDT or hexachlorobenzene in their bloodstreams compared to women who did not have breast cancer.

Research in Israel has linked the consumption of pesticides in foods with symptoms including headaches, tremor, lack of energy, depression, anxiety, poor memory, dermatitis, convulsions, nausea, indigestion and diarrhoea.

In 1990 the WHO estimated that 3 million severe pesticide poisonings occur in developing countries each year, including around 220,000 fatalities
Farmers using pesticides have been measured to have higher incidences of Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, leukemia, skin melanomas, and cancers of the lip, stomach and prostate”. The herbicide 2,4-D has been linked to a two to eightfold increase in Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in agricultural regions. Farm chemicals have been shown to disrupt the human endocrine system and other reports show that many pesticides weaken the immune system making people more susceptible to infectious diseases.

Pesticide and chemical fertiliser use also has incredibly detrimental impacts on surrounding ecosystems poisoning wildlife and polluting waterways.
An extensive survey carried out on 8000 water and fish samples across the US found that 90% of water and fish tested contained one or more pesticides, with nearly half the streams having pesticide levels that exceeded safe levels for aquatic life.

The use of synthetic fertilisers such as nitrogen has increased tenfold in the last 50 years and one half to two thirds of this fertiliser will end up in the world’s waterways and other ecosystems, creating nutrient imbalances such as algal blooms and coral bleaching. In extreme cases, an excess of nitrogen in waterways causes dead zones, where no aquatic life survives, such as that found in the Gulf of Mexico whose size is equal to the US state of New Jersey. There are currently 146 dead zones around the world.

Effect of food on the mind, emotions and spirit

Just as our physical beings are inseparable from our subtle (emotional, mental) and causal (spiritual) bodies so too the physical aspect of food is inseparable from it’s subtle and metaphysical qualities.

The ancient Indian health system of Ayurveda recognises the differing energetic qualities of edible foods and how they influence mental, emotional and spiritual states. They divide food into 3 categories or gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas.

Rajasic food is that which stimulates the mind and emotions, creating restlessness, desire, aggression and pleasure seeking.

Tamasic food, that which is stale, old, extremely processed, devoid of life force is that which is deadens the mind and stifles the spirit creating apathy, listlessness and ignorance, greed, criminal tendencies, laziness & doubt

Sattvic food is that which creates a peaceful mental state conducive for meditation and the cessation of strong desires, cravings and emotional disturbances.

According to Ayurveda, if we take in food that has no life force, has been produced with the exploitation and suffering of animals, the earth or poorly treated workers, or has been produced with the consciousness of greed, anger or indifference, this energy will begin to predominate in our awareness, disturbing our mental, emotional and spiritual clarity.

On a broader scale, if whole societies and cultures are consuming these foods we may begin to see this type of consciousness predominating and increasing within a culture over generations.

The Greek historian Herodotus reported differences in temperament between cultures following different diets. He noted that vegetarian cultures tended to be more advanced in art, science and spiritual development whereas meat-eating nations whilst courageous tended to be war-like and relate to one another through anger, alienation and sensual passions.

Sense impression food - Food of the subtle body

Buddha called the stimulation that we receive through our senses, sense impression food. Just as we feed our bodies with edible matter, we feed our minds through our senses with sound, colour, light, touch, smell, information and thought.

We are consuming sensory impressions constantly, and consciously and unconsciously they impact on our awareness and mental/emotional states. Just as with material food, the type of sensory information we take in can malnourish us or contain toxins to our detriment. The consumption of media, conversations or experiences that contain violence, promote desire, greed, lust, gossip or that overstimulate the mind may influence our mental and emotional states creating cravings, distraction, dissatisfaction, depression, restlessness or aggression.

Buddha taught that avoiding or reducing these types of sense impression foods and favouring wholesome, positive experiences will give us greater nourishment and help us to reduce mental and emotional anguish and suffering.

The third type of nutriment, the food of volition or desire relates to the fruits of ones actions or karma, in that we are fed by what most deeply motivates us and by the thoughts, words and actions we engage.
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To be continued...