All Food is Slightly Poisonous to Our Organism
One of the fundamental tenets of modern nutritional science is that all food
is safe for consumption if, in its production and preparation, basic hygienic
rules are taken into account which prevent "the contamination of food by
bacteria, poisonous chemicals or foreign bodies, such as glass, nails or
insects." [1] Great stress is placed on preventing "multiplication of bacteria
to levels which could cause food poisoning [2] … because of inadequate
cooking/processing." [3] However, if we want to acquire a proper understanding
of the link between food and poisoning we need to ask first: "What is poison?
Every substance may be a poison. It is only a question of how it enters our body
and of how much is taken at a time. Water is a strong poison, if one takes ten
bucketfuls at one time. People do not reflect how relative the word 'poison' is,
for it depends always upon the quantity" [4] of what we consume. There are, of
course, substances which are listed as poisonous because of the knowledge of
their negative impacts on the living organisms. But in regard to poisonous
effects of substances we consume on a daily basis, such as food and drinks,
things are more complex. For this reason we need to become familiar with
specific factors that have influence on the poisonous nature of food substances.
In WHOLEFOOD VERSUS REFINED FOOD there is given a short description of
the activities of digestion in the digestive tract which is a tube from
seven to twelve metres long [5] running through our body.
In the time food spends in the digestive
tract which is extending from the mouth to the small intestine, it is
radically transformed by means of breaking-down processes. And only after
this transformation is completed, can the part which we have digested pass
through the gut wall and became part of our lymph and blood circulation and
thus provide nourishing substances for our body. What are the hidden reasons
behind all these preparations?
One cause can be found in the fact that "in the process of nourishment we have to do with external
substances, external articles of food, their composition and the form
and manner in which they exist in our environment. So long as one holds
to the conception that these nutritive substances are so much dead bulk
– or at best masses containing that sort of life which one generally
assumes to be in plants and other articles of food – it may appear as if all that is necessary is for the external substances taken
into the organism as nutritive matter to be simply worked over by means
of what we call the process of digestion in a broadest sense.
Many people imagine that they have to do with some sort
of indeterminate substance taken in as food, a substance quite neutral
in its relation to us which simply waits, when we have once taken it in,
till we are able to digest it. But such is not the case. Articles of
food are, after all not just bricks which serve in some sort of way as
building material for the construction they are to help in erecting.
Bricks are included in the architect's plan in any way he pleases to use
them because they represent in relationship to the building a mass in
itself quite inert. This is not true, however, of nutritive matter in
its relation to the human being. For every particle of substance we have
in our environment has certain inner forces, its own conformity to laws
of nature. This is the essential element in any substance that it has its own inner
laws, its own inner activities.
Accordingly, when we bring external nutritive substances into our
organism – when we insert them into our own inner activity, so to speak
– they do not simply consent to this at once as a matter of course but
attempt first to develop their own laws, their own rhythms and their own
inner forms of movement. Thus, if the human organism wishes to use these
substances for its own purposes it must first destroy that vital
activity which is peculiarly their own. That these substances do have
their own laws can soon be felt by the human being when, for instance, a
strong poison is conveyed through the digestive canal. He soon feels, in
such a case, that the particular law belonging to this substance has
mastered him, that these laws now assert themselves. Just as every
poison has in general its own inner laws by means of which it carries
out an attack on our organism, so it is with every substance, with all
the nutriment that we take in. It is not something neutral, but rather
it asserts itself in accordance with its own rhythm. This rhythm must
be combated by the human being, so that it is not only a case of working
over neutral building material within man's inner organisation, but
rather that the peculiar nature of this building material must first be
mastered." [6]
For that reason we cannot take food into our body in its original state. If
we were to inject the liquidised content of a very small meal directly into our
blood we would cause ourselves great harm, because our immune system would
recognise this food as a foreign body and consequently attack it as a dangerous
poison. [7]
This is true for all food coming from the outer nature, because "the streaming
of the physical world into man's organism has a poisonous, destructive effect."
[8] Because of this man has to counteract the poisonous nature of food in the
digestive tract until it is properly processed. These activities are summarized
in the following Arab proverb: "One eats oneself sick and digests oneself back
to health." Here is revealed one of the important secrets of nutrition: Every
food is at first poisonous to us until we de-poison it by the help of digestion!
Individual Strength versus Outer Substances and Forces
In our daily life we take into ourselves substances on a ongoing basis – "we
breathe, we eat, we absorb the external world. But we must realize quite clearly
that everything a human being takes in from the outside, is like something which
should not really form part of him. There are many erroneous conceptions in the
world regarding this process of absorbing substances and forces from outside. In
reality, everything we eat is a tiny bit poisonous. For life consists in taking
in nourishment and our not allowing it to become completely one with us: we
offer resistance, and life really consists in this resistance, this defence. But
of course, the substances which we take in as nourishment are so slightly
poisonous that we are able to offer resistance. For if we take a real poison, it
destroys us, because we are unable to defend ourselves against it." [9]
When we become familiar with the poisonous nature of our daily food, we
might seek for a solution in radical minimizing of food intake. But this is not
the right solution, because "we can see that the entire human organism grows
strong in resisting elements in its environment. These forces of resistance are
developed at all times and in all places. We could even say that the entire
external world is 'poison' for man. Whether this 'poison' comes directly or
indirectly, as a substance or as a force, it is taken into the organism,
digested, and overcome, and thus we are enriched, developed and strengthened." [10]
If we apply this insight to the domain of nutrition we can find with
the help of spiritual science "that the entire human organism is built
up solely of things which were originally poison. We
obtained the ability to eat the foods we do today, in that we learned to
make ourselves immune to their harmful influences. We become all the
more strong, to the extent that we incorporate substances into ourselves
in this way. And we make ourselves weak with regard to nature when we
reject her substances. What we have thus taken in from outer nature
makes us strong and is of use to us." [11] Of
course, this refers to the intake of natural foods, not to the intake of
modern 'artificial' food products.
Our health depends on the balance between our inner forces of transformation
and the strength and character of the foreign nature of the food substances we
consume. It makes no sense to compare ourselves with others; each person needs
to have adequate strength to transform any food that has been eaten. We have to
choose such food that suits our personal characteristics and life circumstances.
We have to take into account the quality of what we consume, because the modern
methods of food production have made huge impacts on the nature of food
available to us. And we must take more seriously the question of the proper
quantity of food, because "an excess of nourishment can become a poisoning. A
large number of illnesses are indeed illnesses connected with nourishment – that
is to say, in nourishment no consideration is given to the fact that according
to the kinds of foodstuffs only the proper amounts may be
eaten, if they are to be really digested. So close together are
nourishment and poisoning." [12]
This is due to the "general axiom that whatever approaches man from
outside must be entirely worked over and transformed within him. And if
we wish to look after a person's
health it is of paramount importance to
see to it that nothing enters into him that will remain as it was,
nothing that cannot be dealt with by the human organism and transformed
even if it is only quite minor in degree. This is not only the case in
regard of substances – it is also the case in regard to forces."
[13] Therefore in the domain of nutrition all
depends on the relationship between the amount of foreign substances and
forces entering our organism via food or drink and our individual
capacity for their transformation. If we want to keep healthy we need to
be capable to de-poison everything we consume from day to day. We simply
need to have enough individual power to overcome the foreign nature of
all substances and forces that are entering our organism through eating
and drinking.
The Origin of the Foreign Nature of the Foodstuffs
The issue of food acting as 'poison' can be looked at from various
perspectives. So far we have come to the recognition that in regard to food
"everything is, to some small extent, poison – in everything there is a little
poison; the only difference is in the degree" [14] of toxicity. Now we need to
ask: What is the origin of this poisonous nature of the foodstuffs? In
Fourfold
Nature of Real Foods there is described how our food is composed not only from
physical substances which are known to science, but it is permeated also by
etheric forces, astral forces, and forces of ego-organization which belong to a
specific plant or animal species. This means that carbohydrates, fats and
proteins in various foods are not the same as those found in our bodies, because
they are permeated by etheric, astral, and spiritual forces which are
fundamentally different from the forces of our etheric body, astral body and ego
organization. For that reason all food goes through gradual breakdown and transformation
described in INDIVIDUALIZATION OF HUMAN SUBSTANCES
before it can serve our
individual needs. The first stages of this metamorphosis are happening in the
digestive tract; these activities are characterised as 'de-poisoning' because by
their help we remove foreign etheric, astral, and spiritual forces that are
ubiquitous in our food and drink.
Thus, in relation to nutrition "the essential thing consists in the fact
that a food which a person takes into himself has a particular sum of forces
within it. In the outer world every foodstuff has a very particular sum of
forces within it through which it is adapted to the world. But in the interior of the
human organism everything becomes different. This human organism has to
completely metamorphose the foodstuffs. It must transform the foodstuff
processes into those processes that should hold sway in its own organism. And
that which takes place in the human organism is namely a continuous battle in
that we transform the dynamics of the foodstuffs, in that we make them into
something entirely different. The reaction in our interior against the
foodstuffs is what it is that we actually sense, which stimulates us and
supports our life. Therefore we may not always ask merely: Must we add so and so
much from this or that material? – rather: What does the organism do frequently
with the smallest amount of some material? How do we react to it? The organism
requires just those forces which develop resistance against the external nature
processes." [15]
This doesn't hold true just in regard to the etheric, astral and ego
forces, but also for the physical substances and forces. In regard to
these we need to know that "the balance between the human being and the
world is produced by the polar contrast between physical body and the
ego organization – between outer world and inner world. In the physical
world ego organization is possible to perceive in the form of the
physical body. Looking at the physical body of man as it stands in the
physical world, we must realize that it has nothing fundamentally in
common with the forces working in the physical world. For the moment a
human being dies, this body begins to be subject to the forces of the
external world. This means that the body is no longer built up but is
destroyed. If you don't forget that the physical body is destroyed by
the forces that are working in external nature, you will realize at once
that the body cannot, in its form, be subject in any way to the forces
of the physical world. When the ego organization is forming and shaping
the physical body, therefore, this means that it removes the body from
the forces that are present in man's earthly environment. In other
words, the ego organization is something quite different from all that
is to be found in the physical world." [16]
With this explanation we have arrived at the core reason why is
everything entering us from the outer world – including food and drink –
is foreign to our body which is built up in a manner that can provide a
suitable 'dwelling' for our own 'I'. This building up can be done only
by the help of the processes of
TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF MINERALS in which
our ego-organization participates, thus taking care that every substance
is properly metamorphosed. For example, "salt, as we know it, is outer
world. When the salt containing the forces of nourishment is taken hold
by the ego organization, the ego organization must be in a position
completely to transform the salt as it is in the external world, to
leave nothing of it behind in this form. If anything is left behind,
this means that a foreign body is within the organism," [17]
and we are poisoned by it to a lesser or higher degree.
Because of all these reasons every food which comes from the animal,
plant and mineral kingdoms must be radically transformed. "Nourishment of
the physical body consists in bringing into it substances from the earthly
environment. These substances have their own inner forces, a certain complex
of forces which belongs to them, and when, for example, we take common salt
as an addition to food, this salt, to begin with, because it comes from
outside, has the same inner tendency of action which it has in the external
world. But we begin to take these qualities away from the salt even when it
is in the mouth, and then more and more, so that, finally, if the ego
organization is working properly, there is nothing any longer within us of
the salt, as it was in the external world. The salt has become something
completely different. The activity of the ego organization consists
precisely in transforming the intaken foodstuffs." [18]
Thus we deal in the domain of nutrition with the polarity of the ego
organization and the foreign nature of earthly substances and forces. And if
we wish to be an active participant in the evolution of humanity we need to
strengthen our individual power of transformation with suitable food
choices.
For complementary perspectives see:
♦ NUTRITION AND 'INNER PATIENT'
♦ DIET AS A CAUSE OF ILLNESS
DIETARY CONCLUSIONS & PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS
With the help of this principle we can for the first time understand why
eating can make us sick, for this would not be possible without the existence of
the foreign – that is, poisonous – nature of food substances. This is especially
true in the case of food intolerances and allergies where some representatives
of medical science openly admit that they don't know why the human immune system
"starts suddenly to attack a specific food substance as a foreign body." The
answer is: Because it is foreign to the human organism! The real question is:
What are the underlying reasons for a situation where a person can no longer
de-poison even the 'daily bread'?
In fact, there are multiple reasons contributing to this and
various
degrees of sickness due to nutrition (which encompasses both eating and
drinking):
- In the case of suitable amounts of good quality food we consume day
after day we always get slightly 'sick' (which might be felt as a need for a
short rest after a meal) till we recover by digesting the food we have
eaten.
- If we eat too much we can feel this as a certain heaviness in our
stomach for our organism needs to exert more digestive forces with the aim
of depoisoning what has been consumed.
- If we really over-indulge with the consumption of large quantities of
delicious food (which might happen in the case of festive meals) then we
experience a kind of 'food hangover' until our body recovers by means of
rest and detoxification (including fasting).
- If we eat regularly bad quality food – that is, conventionally produced
food with low vitality and with many artificial substances
(pesticides,
synthetic
food additives, genetically modified organisms, etc) – then we are burdening
our body with substances which are really foreign to our organism. For that
reason we cannot properly handle these artificial substances and sooner or
later we will be confronted with some health problem or serious illness. But
this link is not easily discernible because the daily poisoning is very
slight and it can take a long time before the effects are noticed.
- If food has been heavily contaminated by dangerous substances or
bacteria and viruses through inappropriate methods of growing, processing,
preparation or storage then a person can become ill or can even die after
one single meal (only such cases are counted in the health statistics as
food poisoning).
One needs to be aware that bad quality food is the result of modern
'chemical' farming and food engineering, starting in the middle of 19th century
and becoming a real force of 'progress' after the Second World War. In such
short evolutionary period our bodies did not get used to and cannot properly
transform such food, because it contains substances which have never before
existed in human food. In addition, the use of highly sophisticated food
processing technologies (such as homogenization, microwaving, etc.) is
dramatically changing the inner structure of food products. The plague of
troubles and diseases of the digestive tract, food intolerances, and allergies
demonstrates that people have serious problems with overcoming the foreign
nature of modern food products.
In the case of natural foods which human beings have been consuming
for millennia we have already learnt to become immune to them. As far as
natural foods are concerned, we should be consequently able to digest
all food that was used in the traditional food culture to which our
ancestors belong – in appropriate amounts, of course. But the quantities
can vary from one person to another. There are some general quantity
guidelines given in the
HOLISTIC FOOD 'PYRAMID', but they are not prescriptive. In fact, each
person must find amounts that suit their own individual needs,
regardless of any guidelines.
Individuals can also develop new abilities to digest those natural
foods coming from other traditional food cultures. This is especially
important when a person lives in a foreign country, or if his or her
parents are from different racial and/or national origins. In this way
people become stronger, for they acquire new skills in a similar manner
as when they learn to perform a new type of manual labour, such as for
example sewing, carpentry, or cooking. In this way people
learn to
digest new types of food and simultaneously strengthen their own immune
system. Of course, this works only with natural foods, not with
human-made inventions which can be often called 'food imitation' or
'fake food'. [19]
WARNING: You always have to put the above
practical dietary instructions inside the framework of
GENERAL NUTRITIONAL
GUIDELINES with the aim to know their limits when looking for a solution
of a specific nutritional problem. You also need to be familiar with
THE ROLE OF NUTRITIONAL GUIDELINES
with the aim to avoid any one-sided conclusions.
