Soyagera journey into healthier living

Oprah calls them ah-hah! moments. Some refer to the metaphorical lightbulb. Others say God spoke.  The collquial phrase is, “No duh.” Whichever usage appeals to ya, I experienced it.

I just finished Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin. She refers to various authors on the subject of the dynamics of living systems with this thought:

“The ‘natural’ plant world above [ground] carries life–things grown and change, are born and die. The ‘artificial’ oil world below is dead:  No change occurs in its elements without human technological minipulation. Substances from this realm, then, will not support life” (49).

My god. How did no one realize this? It’s so simple. One cannot manufacture life! And the attempt to do so leads to insurmountable problems. Colbin continues,

“It may be significant that cancer, that frightening epidemic of our time, is a disease in which the life process (the buildup and breakdown of cells) has become deranged” (50).

Without more research, I will not deny that this claim about the cause of cancer seems overly simplistic. But consider this:

“Plants give us food, fuel, shelter, construction material, fibers for clothing, oils, sweeteners, flavors, colors, aroma, and medicinal substances.
Interestingly enough, we get almost the same elements from coal and petroleum: fuel for heating, construction materials (plastics), fibers for clothing (nylon, Orlon, and so forth), mineral oil and cream (Vaseline), saccharin, artificial flavors, colors, perfumes, and synthetic medicinal drugs.
But coal and oil are what’s left of trees that lived millions of years ago–plants long dead, entombed within the bowels of the earth, paralyzed at a biological zero point… (49)”

It then becomes incredibly scary to consider how much of our society is artificial, and how much of that world is being ingested, breathed, swallowed, consumed, touched, and sadly, given to children. Along these lines, I encourage everyone I know to watch “The Story of Stuff.”

This 20-minute web video explains how all this “stuff” came to be and how it is impacting the environment, and therefore, the human body.  I was in search of a video which captured the “Paradigm of Processed Food,” but I think this vintage commercial (parodying a horror flick) is fitting:

Check out Food and Healing. It’s changed my life.