Foodwise

When I joined my friend Katherine in the organization of Steiner inspired talks at the Christian Community Church in Forest Row, Wendy Cook was one of the local speakers I was really hoping would join us.  Our family is really into our cooking but, like anyone,  I really enjoy the inspiration to branch out of our usual meals.  A gathering of someone who has published books on biodynamic cooking would surely be inspiring, right?

Right!

Wendy was terrific.  I was able to take some notes but I have the feeling to get the true essence of what I am going to share, it would be best to buy Wendy's book "Foodwise: Understanding What We Eat and How it Affects Us, The Story of Human Nutrition".

Here are a few of my notes.  Wendy shared with us something an anthroposophical doctor shared with her recently.  For every 1 kg of food we ingest, only 5g of it is assimilated.  It is the essence of the plant that is of the most importance.  Biodynamics, being the best quality of food for the earth, for our bodies and for our connection to everything around us.  For a general understanding of biodynamic food, check out this easy to read article. 

Wendy went onto talking about the three epochs of human consumption.  It started in the Milk and Honey era, which is also used to describe the era young children are in.  The magic of both milk and honey are that they are animal/ plant substances that never enter the blood stream so they are thought to have a lot of dynamic qualities.  Most of us in the holistic world know about the benefits of breast milk and the healing properties of honey and Wendy's commentary about it was a furthering of that knowledge for me.

Then came the epoch called "Bread and Wine".  It was when the "self" started to feel the need of separation and isolation. Ego and importance came into effect.  What was once used for ritual and for sharing was being consumed more regularly to fulfill the self.  Wendy writes:

"According to Steiner it was important for evolving humanity to become thoroughly awake to the importance of concrete existence, so that they could learn from it all that could be learnt. As long as the human being still experienced himself as a citizen of the spiritual world and considered physical life as only a small part of existence, he would not take the possibilities offered by earthly life seriously enough. Milk had had the effect of tying the human being gently to the earth, building nerve, muscle and kapha; bread really earthed him, and wine – initially used by priests in temple rituals – had the task of separating the human from his spiritual origins, encouraging a kind of forgetfulness. As a sacred ritual drink, wine was initially used with care and reverence, but the rituals became decadent."

"This concept of Steiner's, that wine was needed for its shrinking effect upon the spiritual part of the human being, is a hard one to grasp, but perhaps we know from experience that over-consumption of alcohol makes us forgetful, the next day, of what we did or said the day before. Although wine temporarily enlivens us, the fact remains that seeds will not germinate in it, indicating its 'mineralized' status (tamasic in the Ayurvedic system) and here is the clue to the life forces in wine."


The final epoch Wendy talked about was called "Mineralization".  It, as you might imagine, is the path that started with salt being used in cooking to salt being so desired it was used as payment for the roman army.  It is where gluttony and consumption became more pronounced.  You can read a great article by Wendy here that dives into this a bit deeper than what I am going to do in this post.


The big key points of dos and don'ts that I took home were to get the nightshade family out of kids diets asap.  In our group we discovered that most of our kids don't like them anyways and that we are trying to find creative ways to sneak peppers or tomatoes into our kids.  Then I realized that I do, in fact, cover  potatoes with butter and cheese to get the kids to eat them when their bodies are really saying that they don't want them.

She mentioned that Steiner said that grains hold the most light and that if you look at our teeth and what they are made for, the most % of teeth we have are for the mastication of grains.

She said a balance of root- leaf- stem- fruit should be represented in each meal. (more on this in another post)

And she said it is important to be an intentional cook.  Things like nightshades can be used in adult cooking if you know what you need to add to them to offset their harmful or undesirable traits. She mentioned that it is good to cook together, something I really don't enjoy, and so I am going to explore that idea a bit more when Dan comes back from work at some point.

So that's it for now.  Well done you if you made it to the end of this post.  Thank you Wendy for such an inspiring talk.