Nutrition (cont.)
All of this is fodder for an extensive discussion. But there is another detail to this story which brings us back to the topic in hand: the development of grains, grass seeds, as the foundation of the modern diet. It can be observed with great clarity in the food pyramid so beloved by Kellogs and Sanitarium: "Breads, pastas, biscuits and cakes, breakfast cereals and rice and more bread - the foundation of your diet - eat seven serves per day!" This is absolute nonsense. On the contrary, while carbohydrates are definitely required as part of a human diet, the proportions we have are not only far in excess of healthy levels, but the use of grains as a primary source (rather than roots and tubers and fruits) is a major contributor to auto-immune disease. [If you would like to explore this subject further I commend you to this site: http://www.nibm.com.au/resources/cmec_immunocereal.pdf The other major downside to a grain dominant diet, to put it in the language of Chinese Medicine, is the detriment to the Spleen. Let me explain. Chinese Medicine observes a set of five basic flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent, which correspond to the five phases and the five organ systems of Chinese Medicine. The principles of balance and variety suggest that all of these flavours should be a part of your daily experience with no single flavour allowed to dominate. The sweet flavour corresponds to the Earth phase and the Spleen organ-system. As grains are carbohydrates and are converted to glucose in the body, it follows that a grain dominant diet has an excess of sweet flavour. This weakens the Spleen which can lead to digestive problems and oedema, amongst other things. A person with a Spleen deficiency is likely to be overweight, fatigued and depressive or melancholic. |
There were many other detriments to the development of modern civilisation: thousands of years of war lords and bloodshed for instance, as societies began to compete for possession of arable land and individuals exerted their dominance to gain power in increasingly stratified social groups. At this time also humans shifted their mental focus from being an integral part of Nature to being a dominator of Nature. In the process of placing themselves in a hierarchy above the animal, vegetable and mineral spirits, humans began to conceive of a higher power, a force which had dominance over their own lives. This of course lead to the invention of religion and the fiction of ‘God', enabling another class of people who were ‘servants of God' and therefore monopolisers of his sacred instructions. This development dovetailed nicely with the aforementioned war lords and centuries of bloodshed.