shoot turns into stalk and leaves, which reach for the sky. Leaves absorb light and transform it into matter; they are the seat of trapped sunlight that has materialized into chlorophyll and carbohydrate. We, coarse creatures that we are, need plants and leaves as intermediaries for our energy exchange with the cosmos, for we are unable to engage in that exchange directly. Leaves move in the wind, and perhaps for that reason they are thought to be, in South American folk wisdom, best suited to support motion. It is interesting to note that people who start jogging or running find they tend to eat more salads than before. As with roots, we can distinguish two kinds of leafy vegetables: those that taste light and bland, such as the various lettuces, and those that taste sharp or bitter, such as watercress, chicory, dandelion, mustard greens, and so on. While bitter cooked greens are contractive, light-tasting raw ones— lettuce, parsley, dill— are expansive. In general, they support a lightening and an opening up. Raw salads in a regimen that also includes a reasonable amount of contractive foods will ensure a needed lightness and airiness. A lack of fresh leaves may result in pallor and a sallow look. An excess of raw greens, on the other hand, can result in intestinal distress in susceptible people, and perhaps a craving for sweets. FRUITS
• Expansive
• Alkalizing
• Cooling
• Breakdown food Fruit is the final stage of the unfolding of a plant. With its fruit, the plant in a sense reaches its fullest selfdevelopment, attains its ultimate goal. The rest is up to the birds, the bees, the wind, and the rain. Strife has ended, peace reigns, and there’ s nowhere left to go but back: After maturing, the fruit decays. Only then will the seed that it carries have a chance to sprout into new life. Fruits are usually expansive, cooling, relaxing, and generally alkalizing( with the exception of plums, prunes, and cranberries, which can be acid-forming). Because their energy goes upward and outward, most fruits will support openness, lightness, even cheerfulness, and an expansive behavior. In excess, they may cause us to become overexpanded,“ spaced-out.” Metaphorically speaking, if we move away too far from the contracted center, we lose our concentration and our focus.( Other plant derivatives such as sugar, alcohol, and drugs will make the condition even more pronounced. 35) In some cases excess fruit or fruit juices, because of too much expansiveness, can weaken the intestines. Laxatives and enemas are then needed to keep this organ system working. Very fluffy, frizzy hair, perhaps split at the ends, is sometimes the symptom indicating such a condition. Most fruits, as products of warmth and sunlight, are well digested at room temperatures. Cooking tropical fruit may push their energy just over the brink of expansion into contracted limpness. Accordingly, cooler-climate fruits such as apples and pears take to cooking much better than papayas and pineapples; countless variations on baked apples, apple pies, and pear tarts are witness to that fact. Chilling fruit, on the other hand, will increase its ability to cool the body; this may be desirable in the sweltering summer heat, but less so in winter. In fact, because fruit is so cooling to begin with, people who go on all-fruit diets during the cold weather find themselves chilled to the bone. According to my own observations, a fully fruitarian diet seems to support contentment, gentleness, lack of competitiveness, as well as a certain detachment and perhaps even celibacy. It is obviously a diet ideally suited for the pursuit of inner peace, or for nourishing those who have already attained it. Fruits are not tissue-builders, but help the body and spirit work harmoniously together. 36 Fruit eating also supports artistic expression, which in a broad sense could be to a human as a blossom is to a plant. It does not, however, encourage creativity in more mundane areas, such as business or urban planning. NIGHTSHADES
• Expansive
• Alkalizing
• Mostly cooling, except long-cooked tomato sauce
• Breakdown foods( except potatoes, which are buildup foods) The classification of plants that we’ ve followed so far has been a simple one, based more on sense perception than on rigorous biology. There is one group of plant foods, however, that must be considered under its botanical classification because sense perception alone would not be sufficient to help us understand its effects and meaning. The nightshade family, or Solanaceae, comprises some ninety-two genera with over two thousand species; its members include many stimulating, poisonous, or medicinal plants, such as tobacco, henbane, mandrake, and belladonna( deadly nightshade); ornamental plants, such as petunia, chalice vine, and angel’ s-trumpet; and some of our most widely used food plants— potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers of all kinds( green, red,