daily diet, the wider the swing of the pendulum: The more unbalanced substances we have to compensate for, the stronger will be our feeling of uncenteredness. As an illustration of our natural tendency to return to center, or wholeness, consider the curious saga of wheat consumption. First, a hundred or so years ago, it was discovered that stripping the bran and germ off the wheat made the flour not only whiter and fluffier, but also longer-lasting; soon, we were eating white bread. Then, early in this century, food-conscious people such as Sylvester Graham found that the discarded wheat germ contained a considerable amount of nutritive elements and suggested we add it to our meals; soon, we were eating white bread and putting wheat germ in the meat loaf. Finally, in the early seventies, Dennis Burkitt, M. D., of London, noticed that traditional peoples who ate large amounts of unrefined whole-grain cereals, such as corn and millet, had almost no diseases of the digestive tract. Noting that probably half the Western world is constipated, food reformers, following Dr. Burkitt’ s lead, identified bran as the bowel-saving element; soon, we were eating white bread, putting wheat germ in the meat loaf and adding bran to the morning orange juice— except for those who simply went back to eating the whole wheat in pasta, bread, or cereal, as in centuries past. In some ways, juggling parts to rebalance the whole does work. You can relieve the constipation caused by white flour by eating bran. Yet, though the symptom of imbalance may be eliminated, the body is more stressed by such a juggling act than it would be if its owner stuck to the whole grain and avoided the constipation problem altogether. Fragmentation affects foods not only on the cellular, but also on the chemical level. When wheat is refined into white flour, for example, not only does it lose its bran and germ, but some twenty nutrients are also lost or greatly reduced. Enriching the flour— which entails returning four of those twenty nutrients— does not solve the problem. Not only are the added nutrients fewer in number than those present in the original whole wheat; they also lack the energy they had when they were simply part of a living, growing plant. It’ s like cutting off your arm and then fitting you with a prosthetic one— it may have the same form and fulfill some of the same functions, but it is hardly as good as the original. Isolating the components of a living organism and then remixing them will not re-create the living organism. The logic, to me, seems obvious: Added nutrients do not contribute to a live energy field. It is even possible that some of these chemically isolated substances may disrupt or drain it. In short,“ fortified” foods are not necessarily sufficient to sustain life adequately. One researcher reports that a strain of rats fed a synthetic diet with all known nutrients present seemed to live in good health; but in the second and third generation they lost their ability to multiply, and eventually the strain died out. 12 Another area in which it is vital to consider how fragmentation affects the energy field of a food is infant feeding. The major difference between breast milk( or even cow’ s or goat’ s milk) and commercial formula is that the milk is the product of an organism, and therefore has an organizing energy field. Formula, on the other hand, is synthesized; the components are simply placed together, as in the foods given rats in the experiment just mentioned. A great deal of power is required from the organism to overcome the energy deficiencies of such unwhole food and to unfold in a normal manner. Many organisms cannot muster the strength, as the sorry state of our children’ s health testifies. Could the lack of an integrated energy field in baby formulas be the reason for the high correlation of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome( SIDS) and formula feeding? †
Could there be a connection between the feeding of these synthetic foods and the increase in learning disabilities, which are generally the result of an incorrect processing of electrical impulses? It is practically impossible to prove scientifically that a child reared on formula would have been healthier if raised on breast milk. However, mothers who have raised one child on formula and one by nursing notice a vast difference. One of my students said her bottle baby had a lot of infections and allergies, whereas her nursling rarely became sick. Man-made, synthesized“ foods,” and especially infant formulas, will invariably be defective, for they miss the natural life energy that the real thing has. Faulty formulas have caused speech delays, convulsions, and poor growth. The New York Times of November 1, 1982, reported that a TV appearance by two women whose children had suffered from these problems because of faulty formulas brought 65,000 letters in response from parents with similar experiences. And as I finished the first draft of the above paragraph, another story broke in the New York Times regarding a massive recall of infant formula that was found to be deficient in vitamin B 6. Such a deficient formula could lead, the Times said, to“ permanent injuries, including brain damage, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation.” 14 The situation was discussed at length in my cooking class that day; coincidentally, one of my students had fed her child that very same formula. Indeed, he had developed a serious neurological defect that impaired both his learning and his behavior.