Ayurvedic Vegetarian Food Pyramid

Vata : emphasis on sweet, salty, sour and pungent tastes
Kapha : emphasis on bitter, astringent, sour and pungent tastes
Pitta : emphasis on sweet, bitter and astringent tastes

Vata : more dairy, nuts
Kapha : more beans
Pitta : more raw food

Life - Lessons from Biodiversity

Diversity and an "intelligent, organized" chaos encourage life.
A rich ecosystem is full of symbiotic relationships between species. There is self-regulation and coevolution.

Uniformity, squareness weaken and destroy life.
A poor ecosystem promotes parasitic relationships between species. The system is out of balance and self-destroys in an attempt to steady itself.


Diversity and an "intelligent, organized" chaos in diet encourage health.
Diversity and an "intelligent, organized" chaos in physical activity encourage health.
Diversity and an "intelligent, organized" chaos in the one's activities and interests encourage mental health.

Uniformity in diet, physical, interests, daily activities destroy health and life.

Similarly, diversity and an "intelligent, organized" chaos in communities, societies, nations encourage harmony. There is self-regulation and "coevolution".

Uniformity, too much regulation, too much systematic organization, weaken and destroy communities, societies, nations, the environment. There are parasitic relationships. There is gradual destruction - including the environment's - in an attempt by Gaia to steady itself.

White Trash

From WHFoods.com

Question: "It's great that you have listed all the healthiest foods we should eat. Can you also share with us the "unhealthiest foods," those that we should avoid?"

"The "unhealthiest" foods tend to be those that least resemble their original natural ingredients and those that have the most added refined and artificial additives. Prime examples are the so-called "white foods"-white sugar, white flour, and white fat, and the gamut of foods in which they are the principal ingredients. It's not that these foods are white in color-many of them are actually not. It's that these foods have had many of their natural components-including their natural colors-processed away. "White foods" is simply the shorthand label that we are using when we refer to these heavily processed, nutrient-depleted foods.

* "White sugar" includes refined sugar cane or sugar beets having virtually all B vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other essential nutrients removed. Corn syrup is also a "white sugar," made from processed cornstarch and essentially devoid of other nutrients.
* "White flour," analogously, is whole wheat flour minus its nutrient-packed wheat germ and fibrous bran. Nutritionally speaking, white flour is a ghost-like shadow of its original whole grain.
* "White fat" can include rendered animal lard, vegetable oils "hydrogenated" to make them hard at room temperature, and refined fats such as cottonseed oil. Hydrogenation is a chemical process that transforms natural fats into more saturated trans-fatty acids that do not occur naturally and which are strongly associated with cardiovascular disease.

Foods having "whites" as their primary ingredients are frighteningly ubiquitous! Examples include soft drinks, breads, hamburger and hotdog buns, crackers, pasta, pastries and pastry fillings, pies, cakes, frostings, margarine and bread spreads, jellies, sweets and candies, frozen dinners, pizzas, snack foods, doughnuts, candy bars, and cookies-all of which are common snack and convenience foods. Indeed, many of these combine all three whites together-white sugar, flour, and fat! Furthermore, these foods frequently contain artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, texturizing and processing agents, and other additives that further detract from their nutritional stature and your health. These are among the foods that I would consider to be the unhealthiest and the ones that I would avoid."

--

Beyond white foods, one can add potentially very healthy foods ruined by negative production methods such as meat or milk from unhealthy, intensively raised animals. Also, it is good to remember that certain combinations of healthy food can make the end result unwelcome.

Healthy on a Small Planet

Is there a simple way to evaluate the quality of food in terms of health and sustainability?

In the UK, a traffic light food labeling system was introduced in certain supermarkets to indicate whether levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt where safe, moderately high or very high.

While the label is helpful to those aware of their specific health risks - diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure - it fails to give the average consumer an indication of how much "quality" a product has.

The obvious pitfall is to disqualify food on the basis of a nutritional configuration. This type of selection belongs to the realm of marketing, the food and pharmacological industries. Buying food intelligently is not to follow the industry's "health” claims. No natural food is inherently unhealthy.

All natural foods are healthy as long as they are balancing to the eater's constitution, that they are eaten at an appropriate time and season, that they are combined properly, that they are made digestible (with cooking or spices for example), that they are eaten in proper quantity. As a consequence, no "natural" organic food, should be considered unhealthy and attributed a red light. Organic butter might receive a red light in the aforementioned labeling system for its saturated fat content, while it is almost universally life-giving to those eating it in the proper conditions.

Below is an alternative labeling system (open to modifications) which indicates definite risk for health, for the environment or for unfair population exploitation.


Green Light

The Bottom Line:
Healthy. Respectful of the environment. Respectful of workers. Efficient in space and energy. Sustainable.

All foods in this group must be:

• Organic*
• Local
• In Season
• Fair for workers along the entire chain of production and distribution.
• 100% Natural. Without any additives or synthetic chemicals.

List:

• Vegetables
• Fruit
• Whole grains and cereal
• Beans
• Nuts and Seeds
• Oils
• Spices and Herbs
• Beverages
• Unrefined sweeteners
• Eggs
• Dairy**
• Sea Vegetables**
• Honey, propolis, royal jelly, pollen**

Have fresh.
Take into account individual needs (pregnant, diabetes...).
Always include in a varied, balanced diet.

*Organic as in replenishes the soil, respects natural cycles, without chemicals, respectful of the welfare and health of animals, 100% natural, not from large monoculture fields.

**Can have a bad ecological impact, but not as much as “yellow light” or “red light” foods.




Yellow Light

The Bottom Line:
Healthy but either:

• Taxing in resources of space or energy.
• Damaging to the environment or species in excess.
• Addictive.
• Excessively stimulating or dulling.
• Unhealthy when not eaten only occasionally.

All foods in this group must be

• Organic*
• Fair for workers along the entire chain of production and distribution.
• 100% Natural. Without any additives or synthetic chemicals.

List:

• Meat
• Fish
• Poultry
• Coffee, guarana, ...
• Alcohol
• Sweets and candy
• Refined flour, cereal and sweeteners
• All “Green light” foods that are not produced and distributed locally

Red Light

The Bottom Line:
Avoid altogether. Unhealthy, damaging to the environment, damaging to workers, encourages an unethical economy.

• Food grown with chemical pesticides and herbicides
• Genetically engineered food
• Animals fed with food that belongs to this red light list or unsuited for their needs
• Animals not raised in proper conditions for welfare and health
• Fish from polluted water or from intensive fish farms.
• Plants from large monoculture fields
• Endangered species of animals or plants
• Food produced, transformed or distributed in a way that does not respect workers
• Food produced, transformed or distributed in a way that prevents the economic emancipation of poorer countries
  
• Food processed with chemical additives
• Processed oil
• Excessively salty, sweet or fat processed food

Diversity

"Alors que près de 7 000 espèces végétales ont été cultivées depuis le début de l'humanité, 15 variétés de plantes et 8 variétés animales seulement fournissent aujourd’hui 90% des ressources alimentaires de la planète. Cette uniformisation pose le problème de la perte des saveurs et de l’appauvrissement culturel, mais également celui de notre dépendance à quelques variétés alimentaires lorsque celles-ci se trouvent menacées par un agent pathogène, un insecte ravageur ou un aléa climatique.

Variez donc autant que possible votre alimentation et vos achats : ce conseil nutritionnel classique est aussi une bonne façon de soutenir la diversité biologique, qui n’a rien à voir la diversité croissante des produits dans les supermarchés, où les produits soi-disants « nouveaux » sont souvent faits avec les mêmes matières premières – du maïs, du blé, du riz et des pommes de terre."

-MesCoursesPourLaPlanete

Dare to be Naïve! Discovering Buckminster Fuller

I must confess that until today, I knew almost nothing about Buckminster Fuller.

I briefly read about him months ago while trying to figure out what Unitarian theology was about. I learned that he was some sort of genial modern polymath - à la Benjamin Franklin - who could, to those familiar with Jungian typology, easily epitomize the "extraverted intuition + introverted thinking" type. I imagined him as a man who needed to understand everything with a rational approach while being guided by an internal compass pointing to a certain universalism. He was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, philosopher and visionary. [*] The rest, I discovered today thanks to my lunch meal.

I had to prepare my meal early this morning before going to work since I do not have the opportunity to leave for lunch. Going through an Ayurvedic cooking phase, I've been experimenting with Indian recipes which inevitably include clarified butter: ghee. I have been amazed preparation after preparation by the richness in taste and texture it provides and the way it releases the aroma of spices. Today's meal included ghee and quickly after eating, I felt that the ghee itself was somehow responsible for an unusual sense of calm across my body. Curious to learn about the presumed benefits of the elixir, I searched for information online and stumbled upon an article written by a fellow called Peter Malakoff. After finishing the article - and being converted to the use of ghee forever :) - the author intrigued me, and so wanting to learn more about him, I visited his website where I read his biography.

It turns out this man's life is nothing short of incredible! For the sake of comparison, I would say it is what Into the Wild's Chris McCandless's life could have been had he lived earlier, but just a little crazier. To return to the subject of this post, Peter Malakoff after writing a paper was granted a scholarship to spend a month with Buckminster Fuller. This is how the meal lead to learning about the man!

"That night Bucky spoke of the world of sailing and the world as seen by a man at sea. Indeed, much of Fullers terminology, the very words he used and the principles they represented, came from the nautical world. Think of the famous term he coined- 'Spaceship Earth'. He likened the world to a ship, which, he pointed out, is a closed and limited environment, not an unlimited one and always in motion. He pointed out how important it was to grasp and understand this.

He told us of many years ago he had spoken to a group of architects in New York City and had asked the assembled group if any of them knew how much the huge, many storied building they were sitting in weighed. None of them had any idea. Fuller found this to be a major oversight and a serious fault on their part. How could they maximize the potential that could come from building materials and structures if they were not thinking 'ecologically', if they did not know what the building weighed? How could they build something in accord with the operating principles of life, of spaceship earth?

Fuller, who had captained many a boat, said that 'On a ship, one always had to know how much weight was to be carried. It was important to know this if the ship was to be able to perform well on the water. It was this 'closed' or limited environment, similar to the nature of the world as a ship, that gave rise to the very concept of ecology. The very word 'ecos' comes from the Greek word for house or home. Ecology', he said, 'begins with the recognition of the closed or limited environment of the world. It is born of the realization that you cannot just dump your trash or waste into a river or an ocean and that it will just be washed away. We are on a ship, a spaceship and absolutely everything is and needs to be recycled, we need to know how much things 'weigh' and how they 'work'.

He spoke about 'cybernetics' which Bucky defined as the 'science of self-regulating mechanisms'. (Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the 'cyborg' or the self regulating organism. Think of 'cyberspace' as self regulating space). Bucky said that the word, cybernos, comes from the Greek word for the 'helmsman' of a boat. Bucky then made a startling statement, "A drunk cybernos makes less mistakes than a sober cybernos". I asked him how that could be . . . I didn't want to be in a boat or a car driven or steered by a drunk. He shook his head in agreement. I felt completely lost. Then he made his point, "Unless you make a mistake, you do not correct your course. Because a drunk does not make so many mistakes, he does less correction of his course and so his course is mistaken, he weaves his way down the road, or he hits something with deadly results. A sober man is constantly correcting his many little mistakes before they get big and his course is thereby true"

He spoke of 'synergetics', what Fuller called the behavior of a whole system not predicated on the behavior of its parts. He told us of chrome-nickel steel and how its strength is over 50% greater than the sum of the strength of its component metals. He spoke of gravity and how there was nothing in all the stuff of the universe that would predict it would be mutually attracted to another thing.

He spoke of the principle of 'precession'. Bucky told us how precession is the relationship that occurs between objects that are in motion. 'Imagine a top', he said. 'When it is set spinning, if you push it, it will go at right angles to the direction of your push. This is the same as the earth spinning around the sun. The suns greater gravitational attraction would pull the earth directly into itself, but since the earth is spinning it goes in a great elliptical circle around the sun'. Fuller said that the principle of precession is how life 'works'- A honeybee goes to a flower in pursuit of honey. The bee only wants the honey, but at right angles to the intention or drive of the bee, flowers are pollinated. The honeybee is not concerned with pollinating flowers. Bucky proposed that 'life happens at right angles or in a precessional manner to the 180degree straight ahead intentions of the bee'. He went on to say that it was exactly the same with a human seeking money or sex or pleasure or power. Life is happening at right angles to our desires. By recognition of this, he said, we can begin to design our lives to take into account precession and thus work with the nature of nature.

Finally, I remember that Bucky spoke of the word 'trimtab', what it was and what it represented. Fuller told us of how a large boat like the Queen Mary has a very large, many tonned rudder at the the very back of the ship. At the back end of that very large rudder is a very small rudder. When the captain wants to turn the huge main rudder in one direction, he turns the small rudder in the opposite direction. This creates a difference of water pressure or lower pressure vacuum on one side of the large rudder and the main rudder can now be moved with almost no effort; It is literally 'drawn' in that direction. Bucky said this represented the power of the individual to change the direction of the 'ship of state', doing what government and corporations cannot, by applying design science, by doing the 'right' intelligent action. Further, he pointed out how the action of the trimtab is applied when the bulk of the ship has passed, when it seems to have gone past the point of any change. Fuller died in 1983 and the epitaph carved on his tombstone says: "Call me Trimtab""

Concepts like these are precisely what drew me to physics - a chance to increase the focus of my metaphysical observation lens. Knowledge of natural phenomena should give general epistemic tools by the improvement of intuition. Ideas like precession and the trimtab are very poetic and reveal the richness scientific knowledge can bring to philosophy. Many of his ideas may not be new today, but were visionary then.

Journalists tackle nutrition

Our approach to nutrition is wrong.

Michael Pollan brilliantly exposes how "nutritionism" is a messed up ideology which rests upon four inherently wrong premises:
- What's important in food is the nutrients.
- We rely on a "food priesthood" (doctors and scientists) to determine how we eat.
- There are good nutrients and bad nutrients.
- Food's purpose is health only.

"Eat food (real food), not too much, mostly vegetables."

Thank you so much Alex for sharing this! ;)

In the second talk, he casts light on common misconceptions we have about our self-perception in the evolutionary perspective when it comes to feeding ourselves.

Mark Bittman colorfully explains how our consumption of meat and its industry spiraled dangerously out of control.

Michael Pollan @google


Michael Pollan @TED


Mark Bittman @TED

Foie Gras Anyone?

Voyage au pays du foie gras


Everyone eat just a little less of it please!


Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.

Greek philosophers were in some ways antiquity's Oprahs and Dr. Phils, Cosmopolitan Magazine columnists and self-development gurus.

A quick read of Plato's Republic will clearly reveal that the Agora's poets, sophists and demagogic political figures were more likely to be lionized by Athenians. Yet, although their popularity certainly overshadowed philosophers', they did not offer the precious self-help or self-improvement tips the bearded nerds provided.

Our typically Western perspective of associating these thinkers with Senex - Jung's Wise Old Man Archetype - whose works are recondite and daunting, for spectacled college professors or brave hippies only, hides an essential part of the picture. The conventional division of philosophy into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and logic - let's not forget aesthetics, religion and politics - tends to make us forget about the reality of ancient times; the philosopher's job was to give his contemporaries a concrete set of recommendations for their daily lives. Wise advice such as "use Linux instead of Windows", "play Pro Evolution Soccer rather than FIFA soccer", "work less, rock climb more", "how to pick up women".

Plato prescribed eating figs to athletes for better performance. Food certainly is a big part of daily life, and a subject people love to give their opinion about (I know I certainly do). A popular expression claims "you are what you eat". Unfortunately, the food in in the U.S. has the following characteristics:

• Fat - food is deep-fried, smeared in butter, full of low quality oil.
• Emphasizes appearance over content, i.e. is superficial - apples are shiny, drinks and sauces have a pretty color and texture. These same apples are doused in pesticides, the drinks full of carcinogenic chemicals.
• The character on the box is friendly and warm, but the box is devoid of substance - Notice how there are smiling faces on every box or bright warm designs? A quick glance at the forty ingredients list at the back, 95% of which are artificial will give you second thoughts about the pleasure-inducing properties of the food. Which leads me to the next point:
• Artificial - No, what you are eating is not supposed to taste like this; and yes, you aren't used to the original taste and don't like it anymore.
• Littered with unnecessary junk - just like a home is often full of useless items you never will need, food is loaded with things that your body does not require to function. It takes room but serves no purpose. Why do rice cakes which can be found in Europe with one or two ingredients (whole-grain rice and perhaps salt), have about seven additives in the U.S.? This last experience in the supermarket almost gave me a nervous breakdown.

I could go on, it would be unfair. After all, the U.S. are the land of plenty. The healthy food is out there for you if you look for it. Even if mainstream culture unconsciously (or consciously) encourages you to go along with the flow and eat what is advertised for and served in dining halls, you can break out of it, a myriad of possibilties exists. The good, the bad and the ugly are available. Nowhere will you find more organic food, healthier products in quantity, places to exercise, books written about health, slow eating and protecting the environment. The best college professors, the best scientists, the best experts and amazing artists.

This country is endearing. A hodgepodge which generates vertigo. A land where "less is more" becomes "more and more and more" and "more for less $". A masquerade deliquescing into concrete reality. A brave new world; pleasure and positive feelings originating from the insubstantial, the material and the immaterial.