THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF NUTRIENTS
Posted: 11 Oct 2023, 11:15
THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF NUTRIENTS Google translated from German: unchecked
The comprehensive importance of food FOR humans
by Dr. Petra Kühne
"Not true, one must be clear about it: spirit is present, but the spirit must act in the materials in order to act on earth. And therefore, especially when you practice spiritual science, you have to know the effect of the mind in the material." Rudolf Steiner 1
Before a house is built, there must be a building plan. It arises in the head of the architect, so it is initially only spiritually present. Then you can start with the materials to make the house physically created. Likewise, one can imagine that there were ideas of higher beings, the cosmos, who thought the earthly matter, the material before it actually arose. Our matter originally comes from the cosmos, is stardust as the astrophysicists say.
Spirit and matter...
... the philosophers saw many centuries as opponents and polarities that conditioned each other. Only in materialism, which since the 19th century strongly influenced science, the primacy of the substance, the matter, was established. Spiritual should not be present first as an idea, but as a runoff from matter. Ideas should then be created through nerve impulses and chemical reactions. Only nutrients feed people and create the basis for their mental work. Now in the 21st. In the 19th century, these materialistic ideas slowly dissolve, but especially in nutrition, they still have a strong effect. Science does not speak of life forces, they are considered unscientific by many. But the findings are increasing that consciousness, for example, influences the utilization of nutrients - i.e. a mental process affects the food matter. For example, it is recommended to eat carefully and slowly, as this reduces the appetite and consumes less. Nutritionists now use these exercises for overweight people who want to lose weight. So it depends not only on the amount of calories, but also on the conditions under which humans consume them.
Likewise, many people feel that the origin and production of food must be understood mentally. There is also an exercise with which you can train yourself if you visualize the biography, the career, of a food. This exercise shows an influence on nutrition when it is not only presented, but experienced internally. Thus, one can lose the appetite for meat when understanding the conditions in factory farming. Or the conscience comes up when you buy cheap coffee that was produced under the exploitation of the coffee farmers. But this exercise also works in a positive sense when the biography of a Demeter apple is traced by the regional court. Rudolf Steiner has chosen such an example to show a way to recognize the spiritual in food:
"Food and drink is something that is committed every day out of drive, out of instinct, and it really takes quite a long time for the one who goes through a spiritual development to include these things in the spiritual life, so to speak. Especially everyday things are most difficult to incorporate into spiritual life, because we have only included food and drink when we can follow why, in order to serve the entire course of the world, we have to take the physical substances in a rhythmic process and what relationship the physical substances have to spiritual life; how metabolism is not only something physical, but also has something spiritual through its rhythm." 2
If we are aware of the biography of a food, this also has an influence on our shopping behavior.
Eating and eating appeal to knowledge as well as feeling and acting
Many people know which food is good, but they do not act on it. This discrepancy is so common that today there is talk of the action gap that exists between thinking and speaking and actual behavior. Man does not bring both together. Food is associated with enjoyment and taste, nutrition with knowledge of nutrients and healthy food. This is about the two levels of man:
the nerve-sense system with thinking and
the metabolic-limb system with the will.
They are both often like separated. But there is a connection between them and that is the feeling that is assigned to the rhythmic system. It is often too little, one-sided or exuberantly included, if you e.g. B. is uncritically enthusiastic about a new form of nutrition. But the enthusiasm for an idea is necessary to implement it. It does not work without sensation and feeling, otherwise the knowledge and the idea remain without a real drive. If you refer to the exercise on the biography of a food, it can be said that the idea (thinking) of the path of an apple only uses the nerve-sense system. But if you feel how it arises from the flower through the pollination of a bee, how sun and shadow acted on it until the harvest and sale in the store, the rhythmic system is involved. You can do this example once with a conventional and organic apple. The former was sprayed several times during its maturation period, perhaps packed in distant countries and landed in Europe by ship, traded on the wholesale market and offered in a supermarket chain. What ideas accompanied him from the farmer to the dealer? On the other hand, the path of an apple can be understood differently from a regional Demeter farm: from the sun that made it ripen to the offer in the farm shop. If you buy it in April, it has gone through a storage period that changed it further. It forms an image of the spiritual, which is effective in the apple. In addition to the physical substances, every plant and animal is based on spiritual ideas as well as life and emotional forces.
In Steiner's words: "However, there is a way to gradually spiritualize these things that are not merely demanded by an external material necessity. Because there is just the possibility of looking at these things in such a way that we say to ourselves: We eat this or that fruit, and we can at least form an idea through our spiritual insights, how, let's say, an apple or some other fruit stands for the whole of the universe. But that takes a long time. Then we get used to not letting the food be a mere material fact, but we get used to paying attention to the proportion, for example, the spirit has in the maturation of a fruit in the sun's rays. Therefore, we spiritualize even the most material, everyday processes and gain the opportunity to penetrate even there with our thoughts; I can only indicate this here, as thoughts and ideas can also be brought into it. But that's a long way to go, and very few people in our age can come to think fully about food." 3
Of course, it is difficult to perform such an dining meditation with all the food that is in a meal. Rudolf Steiner is right that only a few people are currently able to do so. It is also not appropriate to do this at the meal, otherwise you will not come to eat at all because of all the thought. But before or after is certainly a way to deal with the mental aspect of one or more foods. Many people today are concerned with thoughts about cultivation, the type of animal husbandry, the preparation and social consequences of food production more than 100 years ago. The lines of Rudolf Steiner were spoken in 1910. In the more than 100 years since then, a lot has changed. Thinking in cycles, recognizing connections between the cultivation of food and its value has improved a lot. In this respect, the exercise is certainly easier today than it was then. These thoughts about a food can make a big difference, up to changes in buying and eating behavior. For a mindful adjustment to the meal, table sayings or table prayers are also suitable, for example.
Mind and nutrients
So far, it has been about the spiritual in food. They consist of nutrients such as protein, fats and carbohydrates produced by living beings with their etheric and astral powers. Therefore, even in the nutrients, the spiritual works. When looking at them, one should therefore also look behind the purely material effect. Thus, vitamins are based on life forces bound in matter. They were originally connected to life processes. Therefore, they are not only material substances that can be taken as a food supplement. This relationship is also reflected in the fact that isolated vitamins work less than when ingested with a plant or animal food. It is called the bioavailability of a substance. It indicates the efficiency. The bioavailability of a vitamin or mineral is higher in plant or animal foods than in the physical (mineral) substance. Today, this fact is usually explained materially as the effect of accompanying substances or the structure of the cells in which the substance is embedded. Actually, it is about the forces of the spiritual that have provided the structure and the interaction of the accompanying substances. Rudolf Steiner chooses the image of ice, the matter that floats in the spiritual water. The ice is created from the liquid by external conditions such as the falling temperature. So you can understand the matter as fallen out, condensed spirituality.
"What is matter in humanities? Just another form of mind! If spiritual science speaks of matter, matter and body, it speaks of it as it speaks of ice in relation to water. Ice is water in a different form." 4
These examples show how we can approach thinking that includes the spiritual in food. It is about the mental effects of plants, animals and food, not just a material view of nutrients. This means that one must also develop an expanded understanding of nature and humanity for nutrition, which goes beyond the physical alone.
Perhaps dealing with the spiritual of food can lead to no longer eating too much, too unconsciously and too much confusion. How many mental impulses storm us in our digestion when you think of a ready-made meal alone that can contain food from different continents? Of course, it is not meant to eat completely ascetic and one-sidedly and to always think about the spiritual in the food. It is only one way that leads to the comprehensive meaning and effect that food can exert on us humans. The fact that conscious food reduces the amount of consumption you need to live is a well-known fact. This can also be a long-term contribution to the distribution of the world's food.
Author: Dr. Petra Kühne
Working Group for Nutritional Research e.V.
www.ak-ernaehrung.de / info(at)ak-ernaehrung.de
This article summarizes the contributions "The Spiritual of Food" from the Nutrition Newsletter 1-19 and 2-19.
More on the topic can be found here: Petra Kühne: Vitamins - active ingredients of the living. Working Group for Nutritional Research Bad Vilbel 2015
The comprehensive importance of food FOR humans
by Dr. Petra Kühne
"Not true, one must be clear about it: spirit is present, but the spirit must act in the materials in order to act on earth. And therefore, especially when you practice spiritual science, you have to know the effect of the mind in the material." Rudolf Steiner 1
Before a house is built, there must be a building plan. It arises in the head of the architect, so it is initially only spiritually present. Then you can start with the materials to make the house physically created. Likewise, one can imagine that there were ideas of higher beings, the cosmos, who thought the earthly matter, the material before it actually arose. Our matter originally comes from the cosmos, is stardust as the astrophysicists say.
Spirit and matter...
... the philosophers saw many centuries as opponents and polarities that conditioned each other. Only in materialism, which since the 19th century strongly influenced science, the primacy of the substance, the matter, was established. Spiritual should not be present first as an idea, but as a runoff from matter. Ideas should then be created through nerve impulses and chemical reactions. Only nutrients feed people and create the basis for their mental work. Now in the 21st. In the 19th century, these materialistic ideas slowly dissolve, but especially in nutrition, they still have a strong effect. Science does not speak of life forces, they are considered unscientific by many. But the findings are increasing that consciousness, for example, influences the utilization of nutrients - i.e. a mental process affects the food matter. For example, it is recommended to eat carefully and slowly, as this reduces the appetite and consumes less. Nutritionists now use these exercises for overweight people who want to lose weight. So it depends not only on the amount of calories, but also on the conditions under which humans consume them.
Likewise, many people feel that the origin and production of food must be understood mentally. There is also an exercise with which you can train yourself if you visualize the biography, the career, of a food. This exercise shows an influence on nutrition when it is not only presented, but experienced internally. Thus, one can lose the appetite for meat when understanding the conditions in factory farming. Or the conscience comes up when you buy cheap coffee that was produced under the exploitation of the coffee farmers. But this exercise also works in a positive sense when the biography of a Demeter apple is traced by the regional court. Rudolf Steiner has chosen such an example to show a way to recognize the spiritual in food:
"Food and drink is something that is committed every day out of drive, out of instinct, and it really takes quite a long time for the one who goes through a spiritual development to include these things in the spiritual life, so to speak. Especially everyday things are most difficult to incorporate into spiritual life, because we have only included food and drink when we can follow why, in order to serve the entire course of the world, we have to take the physical substances in a rhythmic process and what relationship the physical substances have to spiritual life; how metabolism is not only something physical, but also has something spiritual through its rhythm." 2
If we are aware of the biography of a food, this also has an influence on our shopping behavior.
Eating and eating appeal to knowledge as well as feeling and acting
Many people know which food is good, but they do not act on it. This discrepancy is so common that today there is talk of the action gap that exists between thinking and speaking and actual behavior. Man does not bring both together. Food is associated with enjoyment and taste, nutrition with knowledge of nutrients and healthy food. This is about the two levels of man:
the nerve-sense system with thinking and
the metabolic-limb system with the will.
They are both often like separated. But there is a connection between them and that is the feeling that is assigned to the rhythmic system. It is often too little, one-sided or exuberantly included, if you e.g. B. is uncritically enthusiastic about a new form of nutrition. But the enthusiasm for an idea is necessary to implement it. It does not work without sensation and feeling, otherwise the knowledge and the idea remain without a real drive. If you refer to the exercise on the biography of a food, it can be said that the idea (thinking) of the path of an apple only uses the nerve-sense system. But if you feel how it arises from the flower through the pollination of a bee, how sun and shadow acted on it until the harvest and sale in the store, the rhythmic system is involved. You can do this example once with a conventional and organic apple. The former was sprayed several times during its maturation period, perhaps packed in distant countries and landed in Europe by ship, traded on the wholesale market and offered in a supermarket chain. What ideas accompanied him from the farmer to the dealer? On the other hand, the path of an apple can be understood differently from a regional Demeter farm: from the sun that made it ripen to the offer in the farm shop. If you buy it in April, it has gone through a storage period that changed it further. It forms an image of the spiritual, which is effective in the apple. In addition to the physical substances, every plant and animal is based on spiritual ideas as well as life and emotional forces.
In Steiner's words: "However, there is a way to gradually spiritualize these things that are not merely demanded by an external material necessity. Because there is just the possibility of looking at these things in such a way that we say to ourselves: We eat this or that fruit, and we can at least form an idea through our spiritual insights, how, let's say, an apple or some other fruit stands for the whole of the universe. But that takes a long time. Then we get used to not letting the food be a mere material fact, but we get used to paying attention to the proportion, for example, the spirit has in the maturation of a fruit in the sun's rays. Therefore, we spiritualize even the most material, everyday processes and gain the opportunity to penetrate even there with our thoughts; I can only indicate this here, as thoughts and ideas can also be brought into it. But that's a long way to go, and very few people in our age can come to think fully about food." 3
Of course, it is difficult to perform such an dining meditation with all the food that is in a meal. Rudolf Steiner is right that only a few people are currently able to do so. It is also not appropriate to do this at the meal, otherwise you will not come to eat at all because of all the thought. But before or after is certainly a way to deal with the mental aspect of one or more foods. Many people today are concerned with thoughts about cultivation, the type of animal husbandry, the preparation and social consequences of food production more than 100 years ago. The lines of Rudolf Steiner were spoken in 1910. In the more than 100 years since then, a lot has changed. Thinking in cycles, recognizing connections between the cultivation of food and its value has improved a lot. In this respect, the exercise is certainly easier today than it was then. These thoughts about a food can make a big difference, up to changes in buying and eating behavior. For a mindful adjustment to the meal, table sayings or table prayers are also suitable, for example.
Mind and nutrients
So far, it has been about the spiritual in food. They consist of nutrients such as protein, fats and carbohydrates produced by living beings with their etheric and astral powers. Therefore, even in the nutrients, the spiritual works. When looking at them, one should therefore also look behind the purely material effect. Thus, vitamins are based on life forces bound in matter. They were originally connected to life processes. Therefore, they are not only material substances that can be taken as a food supplement. This relationship is also reflected in the fact that isolated vitamins work less than when ingested with a plant or animal food. It is called the bioavailability of a substance. It indicates the efficiency. The bioavailability of a vitamin or mineral is higher in plant or animal foods than in the physical (mineral) substance. Today, this fact is usually explained materially as the effect of accompanying substances or the structure of the cells in which the substance is embedded. Actually, it is about the forces of the spiritual that have provided the structure and the interaction of the accompanying substances. Rudolf Steiner chooses the image of ice, the matter that floats in the spiritual water. The ice is created from the liquid by external conditions such as the falling temperature. So you can understand the matter as fallen out, condensed spirituality.
"What is matter in humanities? Just another form of mind! If spiritual science speaks of matter, matter and body, it speaks of it as it speaks of ice in relation to water. Ice is water in a different form." 4
These examples show how we can approach thinking that includes the spiritual in food. It is about the mental effects of plants, animals and food, not just a material view of nutrients. This means that one must also develop an expanded understanding of nature and humanity for nutrition, which goes beyond the physical alone.
Perhaps dealing with the spiritual of food can lead to no longer eating too much, too unconsciously and too much confusion. How many mental impulses storm us in our digestion when you think of a ready-made meal alone that can contain food from different continents? Of course, it is not meant to eat completely ascetic and one-sidedly and to always think about the spiritual in the food. It is only one way that leads to the comprehensive meaning and effect that food can exert on us humans. The fact that conscious food reduces the amount of consumption you need to live is a well-known fact. This can also be a long-term contribution to the distribution of the world's food.
Author: Dr. Petra Kühne
Working Group for Nutritional Research e.V.
www.ak-ernaehrung.de / info(at)ak-ernaehrung.de
This article summarizes the contributions "The Spiritual of Food" from the Nutrition Newsletter 1-19 and 2-19.
More on the topic can be found here: Petra Kühne: Vitamins - active ingredients of the living. Working Group for Nutritional Research Bad Vilbel 2015