“ electrodynamic theory of development.” Three years later, with F. S. C. Northrop, he published“ The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life” in the Quarterly Review of Biology. During the following twenty-one years he would see another fifty-eight of his own papers on that subject published in the most prestigious science journals in the country. 8 What Dr. Burr demonstrated, through the use of highly sensitive instruments, is that plants, animals, and human beings possess electromagnetic force fields, or energy fields. These fields both determine and are determined by the form and condition of the organism to which they belong. Apparently, it is also this field that is responsible for keeping the organism recognizably“ itself,” regardless of floating electrons or constant cellular turnover. More recently, British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake, Ph. D., consultant plant physiologist at the International Research Institute in India, shook the scientific community with a new idea: He postulated the existence of a field that determines the form of living systems before they actually grow the material parts comprising it. Sheldrake calls that the morphogenetic field, which is not to be confused with an electric field. It depends on form, not electrical charge, although it does have an actual effect— it can be“ tuned into”— through both time and space. 9 There is nothing mystical about this energy field, even though it might indeed be related to the halo traditionally depicted around the heads of saints. In fact, voltmeters can measure it at the surface of the organism, as well as at a short distance from the surface. It can also be detected by a photographic process called Kirlian photography. And some people( more than you’ d think!) are actually able to see this field; they call it the aura. My daughter was able to do this when she was in kindergarten and drew some wonderful portaits of me with green and, to my chagrin, even red halos. Whatever they sense, voltmeters, Kirlian photographs, and aura readers all agree on one crucial point: The force field fluctuates. It is never static. It becomes weaker or stronger, brighter or duller, larger or smaller. These changes both reflect and are reflected by the condition of the force field’ s corresponding organism. This is as true for trees and flowers as it is for dogs and people. With this and all the preceding information in mind, we can arrive at a loose definition of a whole living organism, or system: It is an aggregate of physical elements and parts, plus an organizing energy field that makes the separate parts cohere and establishes them as a system. What influences the force field of an organism to change? To a greater or lesser degree, everything. One of the laws of nature, as we’ ve seen, is that“ everything changes,” and we know that living organisms change faster than anything. Not only do they undergo roughly predictable large cycles( birth, growth, decay), as well as smaller ones( respiration, digestion, sleep), but they are also changed by the continuous movement of their component parts and elements. The energy field is influenced by these inner fluctuations and influences them in turn; where the changing starts, and where it stops, is impossible to say. The energy field of an organism is also influenced by external factors: food, light, wind, temperature, atmospheric pressure, cosmic rays, and so on.( This is not a one-way street, however. Changes have been measured in the earth’ s magnetic field that we’ ve caused by the blinking of an eye. 10) Everything, then, has an influence on us, on our energy field, either subtle or obvious. We can dismiss some influences as not important; others, especially if bothersome, we may want to investigate further. And as our own energy field is influenced by food, it’ s worth our time to explore what in turn influences food’ s energy field, and how. Things that we didn’ t think made much difference— such as cooking methods or the freezing of foods— may turn out to have, as I hope to show you, a dramatic influence on us. Nonquantifiable properties of food, accessible to our senses and our intuition, though not to our science, can spell the difference between illness and health. It’ s up to us, then, to become aware of these subtle influences so as to make positive choices toward healing. What I propose to explore now, and in the remainder of this book, are the various ways in which food as a system influences the human system. It’ s a model I have been using and refining for the past twenty-five years, and I have found it to be highly responsive and useful for describing, explaining, initiating, and predicting changes in health. By no means is this model the only one that works, nor is it complete or foolproof; much more correcting and refining needs to be done. But it is a helpful tool, and I hope you will be able to put it to work for you. THE LIFE FORCE IN FOODS The mechanistic worldview describes food in terms of its chemical components— proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins. The systems view, based on science and on the holism of our everyday sensory experience, sees food in terms of its relationships— context, properties, effects, taste, aroma, origin, direction of growth, color, texture— as well as its chemical properties. One viewpoint does not negate the other; it is like looking on the world with two eyes, where one eye sees things slightly differently from the other. When we put both viewpoints together, we get three-dimensional vision.