In yer mouth, out yer f -holes

June 10, 2008 at 11:22 PM

Greetings,
Haven’t written an odd blog for a while so just to keep my hand in….
To continue with the question Ruth raised in a recent blog about an individual sound I pose the question `what is an individual sound in the most general sense?` For the sake of argument I am going to suggest it is an expression of the divinity in you. Whether or not one is religious is not particularly relevant here. I think most people recognize that there is a rather abstract idea we talk about as part of our personal development called something like `our spiritual side` although it is really to the fore in our daily lives and a lot of people have seem trouble explaining exactly what they mean by it. However, one of our main goals in life which is central to the degree of happiness we experience is spiritual growth and the degree to which we do grow and, as a result, allow divine energy to flow freely within and from us. This is, in my opinion, reflected in the sound we produce on the violin.
This doesn’t mean we need to start going to church to play better or walk barefoot through the Apennines without a Blackberry. Funnily enough it has a lot to do with something much closer to home: food. An awful lot of religious bigwigs have been, over time, concerned with what we eat and its central role in spiritual development. The blueprint for mankind’s eating patterns set out in Genesis 1:29 is quite clear about vegetarianism: `Flesh food weakens the moral will-power, weakens clarity of mind and intellect for understanding God’s messages to us, dulls the sense of spiritual receptivity to the light and grace of God, and strengthens the animal tendencies, allowing them dominance over our mental and spiritual powers.`
Then Jesus hammers it home in The Essene Gospel of Peace, Book One (p36) : But I say to you: Kill neither men nor beasts, nor yet the food which goes in your mouth. For if you eat living food, the same will quicken you, but if you kill food, the dead food will kill you also. For life comes only from life and from death comes always death. And everything which kills your bodies kills your souls also….
Whipping over to a different cultural perspective consider the ancient but still thriving and widely respected practice of Indian (Ayurvedic ) medicine. This tradition has always argued that food is divided into three basic types which have a mental/physical counterpart essential to health and spiritual development. A sattvic state of mind is clear, peaceful, harmonious, interested in spiritual life and ideal for violin playing. To get here we eat sattvic food which are easy to digest and do not build up toxins in the body. These are: all fruit, vegetables, edible greens, grasses, beans , raw milk, honey, and small quantities of rice or bread.
A rajasic mind is active, restless, worldly and aggressive, typical of a corporate executive or a soldier. Rajasic foods stimulate the nervous system, almost always to excess. They include coffee, green or black tea, tobacco, fresh meat, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar , oily fried foods and spices such as garlic and pepper. They are used without thought to carry out worldly activities (can’t start scales until I’ve had a Starbucks) and typically lead us into a state agitation and eventually burnout. These foods are so taste stimulating that they distract the mind from inner somatic messages integral to producing our real violin sound.;)
Tamasic foods are the nutrition of moral and physical degenerates including drug addicts and criminals. They are stale, decayed, decomposed, spoiled, overcooked, processed and er, fast. Chemically treated with pesticides, fungicides and loaded with artificial colors and sweeteners. In essence the Standard American Diet. This goes quite a long way towards explaining why the US ranks lower than 20th on life expectancy tables and has more than 20 000 murders a year.
Anyway, this hopefully provides some food for thought (explain that one…) about your sound. I’m off for a prune.
Cheers,
Buri

I too think that food is a very important part of our lives - there is certainly a spiritual connection there imo. To me, food is a form of love.

Speaking solely of spirituality though, picture a rather unhealthy fellow sitting in McDonalds eating a burger and fries. Jesus looks down on him, unseen, and knows that this man has a heart of gold. Another man across the road is in A-1 tip top condition, and is tucking into raw sprouts and lean vegetables, plucked fresh that morning from an organic farm and flown in straight to market. But this man is spiritually lost, despite his great physical health. He is somewhat spiritually lacking, as far as God is concerned. Who is the more spirtual man? That's something that struck me about the purity of food, and its spiritual limitations.

Greetings,
it`s a good comment Jon. There is no attempt to claim that someone who abuses their body cannot achieve spirituality or that doing pretty much what nature/dviinity intended will automatically lead to great spiritual development. It simply smoothes the road. However, if one accepts that eating flesh and of the worse possible type is not only deadly t oneslef but to the palnet then the person sititng in MacDo0nald`s has at least in the area of eatign achived little or nothign in the way of goodness and since that is a major part of what we are then it is actually not a very hopeful scenario. If you don`t accept the position I present then it is perfectly fine and probable.
Cheers,
Buri
My diet is seefood: I eat what I see. But all I can see are only the beautiful food. Oh, I look at the ugly ones for sure but I don’t see them as food. Is that why my violin sounds so sweet?
Greetings,
I`m more cocnerned about if your eyesight were to fail...;)
Would you only eat squash?
Cheers,
Buri
I don't know how well that explains American life expectancy. The polio vaccine everybody my age got on a sugar cube when they were a kid might factor in for example, some think.

The foods thing is interesting. In my playing around with this, I've noticed that the heathiest foods can make you feel bad, nervous, and so on. I think this might be because things that are have been suppressed are allowed to come into consciousness. Precisely what happens when giving up smokes, for example. Hang in there. The best food is what you grow in your backyard. If you want tomatos in the U.S. this year, it had better be grown in your backyard. It might be a trend. Last I checked, land in eastern Ky. still goes for less than $1000/acre. Make a farmer out of yourself. Let's be hippies together. Peace out.

Greetings,
Jim, the vaccine wa son a sugar cube!;)
That wa spart of the average 130 kg of sugar consumed per yera by each American.
Health foods make you feel worse? Yes, that can defintiely happen. First problem is that going directly into an absolutely pure diet, or even less for most, leads to the immediate discharge of accumulated toxins into the blood stream. Can cause serious illness. That`s a cas eof a little knowledge being...
The other point is how does one define healthy food? Organic is a crucial start but there is no one diet that suits everyone. It depends on your physical make up. Healthy Foods that heal in some cases exacerbate the condition in others.Foods that cause an akaline response in one person cause an extremely acidic response in another. That`s why the best way to a truly optimum diet actually involves blood testing after eating among other things. Science has a great deal of tools to offer these days t find out what works for us as quickly as possible.
Prunes are of course , superior to tomatos.
Cheers,
Buri
"The other point is how does one define healthy food? "

Well, one that's not sugar, for example? ;) Sugar cube delivery system should have been the first clue. But I'm sure you've heard "...helps the medicine go down" always sung with a British accent. Was a hip delivery system though. I'm sure it made the cover of Life at least once, though it wasn't p.v. being delivered.

Buri, the mind's eye never fails to see the truely good food, especially you are born to eat like a Chinese chick:)
what you are is what you eat
could be a misnomer...
i'd go with
what you are is what you play well
what you are not is what you cannot play well.
in the meantime,be certain to eat a healthy mix of edibles before and
after a session of playing.
as per the norm,common sense should prevail--- otherwise, you could be considered a rube-with corresponding incorrect ideational intonations.
Jim, I’m a huge fan of zero-mile organic food – clean and tasty food grown in my yard all around the house. The best are pole-beans (oodles of them producing on a small tripod each year), western and Chinese broccolis (cut and come so you plant once and harvest for a long time from a few plants), spinach, oriental greens (cut and come, year-round abundance), tomatoes, and of course the snow peas. Every part of a snow pea plant is useful: the tender tips and the peas are delicious, the flowers are pretty, the roots enrich the soil and the whole vine can be fed to rabbits to make them happy and to produce more rabbit beans for the garden. Garlic is easy and fun to grow too. Apples taste much better right if picked right from the trees, so are the cherries and plums. Fig trees are doing well here as well. It makes no sense to grow lawn in a sunny yard and go to local grocery to buy stale veggies during growing seasons.

The only drawback of being an urban farmer is it’s addictive and can take away a lot of my violin time. Great intonation and a lush weed-free vegetable garden don’t co-exist very well. Life is tough!

This brings up a very interesting question in my mind- there are perhaps a disproportionate number of singers whose rich, deep voices seem to be accompanied by a not inconsiderable girth. There are of course notable exceptions, but is it possible that not being lean and trim and possibly having a higher fat/carbohydrate content in one's diet more often helps rather than hurts the fullness and roundness of the tone of the voice? Does this apply in any way to violinists's tone and the thickness of their fingers? If the thickness is not just from genetics but from diet is it possible on average that thin boned or thin fingered players don't produce the same richness of tone that thicker-boned or thicker-fingered players do?
I have no answers, I'm just curious if any of you feel these ideas are at all valid or if it's completely random that these factors affect the quality of vocal tone and rich violin tone?
I personally think that thicker fingers are an advantage on the violin's "Big Brother" (viola). I have to play more on the pads of my fingers than tips to get a good tone, esp. on the C string. And it helps a little with fingered 5ths. The remaining "extra girth" is bothersome.
Hi Ron, I have noticed a few big singers with great voice and got the similar impression as you described, but then I also find they are the minority among the great singers. They may leave a strong impression on us by being unusually big on stage but that’s not the norm among successful singers, right?
Oh man, I'm coveting the fresh tomatoes now! You know, I never noticed that about Genesis 1:29 until you pointed it out just now. Makes sense, though; I didn't think killing was part of the original plan.
Fascinating thread, it would be very interesting to have a weekend poll on how many violinists are vegetarians or vegans etc.
Stay tuned for rube vs. psycho, coming up next!
Stephen,

Thank you for an interesting blog. I went for my yearly physical last week and the doctor told me the exactly the same thing about foods as you're saying. Oh by the way the doctor added cup of noodles and rice crackers to the list of tamasic foods. I wonder if that has anything to do we the sucide rate which is now over 30,000 in Japan?

Cheers,
Craig

Hi,

Yes, food is important to life and playing, but it varies among people. One cannot simplify it to one method. Individuals vary. Many things lead to diabetes or other problems, but the source of the problem depends on the person.

Curiously, I have found the multi-faceted approach of Dr. James D'Adamo in his theory on bloodtype and diet to have widespread applications in the sense that many people naturally gravited towards recommandations he makes without being aware of the existence of his works. I recommend the reading. Has certainly helped me to face long term problems with diet, digestion and other matters.

Cheers!

P.S. The concept of vegeterian diets, though noble is not for one and all. Many societies lived well for long periods of time on a hunter/gatherer based diet and the introduction of grains caused serious metabolism problems (for example in many American Indian tribes). Therefore, I find that one has to find the approach that suits him/her, though a vegeterian approach is the solution for many, but not all.

At the risk of having prunes rubbed into my face I would like to launch the theory that a vegatable plucked from the earth or a fruit that is no longer attached to a tree is if not already dead is actually dying.I myself eat a vegetarian diet because my son and daughter are vegetarians and I can't be bothered to cook a double menu.If however a rare 'Bistecca Fiorentina' presents itself my teeth have no trouble tearing at the dead flesh and I enjoy its succulent tenderness oozing with yummy blood.Bean shoots are definately out with me but I'm a magician with chick peas.Where does this leave me spititually? don't know but will ponder whilst drinking the new elixer of youth (glass of red wine).
Greetings,
Hi Christian.
>Many societies lived well for long periods of time on a hunter/gatherer based diet

Not sure exactly what you mean by lived well. Certainly they would have hadmany of the health probelms of eating meat. Not all because a) the emat was free range and organic which is vastly different from today`s tortured , medicine packed carcasses and b) they had to spent a lot of time running after the damn things which would help to compensate.
However, if you consider the nature of the socitie sthemselves you can see they correlate with the predictions of the ayuervedic description.

>and the introduction of grains caused serious metabolism problems (for example in many American Indian tribes).
Too true. Eating primarily an inferior grain in the way many ancient cultures did would be extremely unhealthy. That is very far from an ideal diet indeed. Mucus forming and lacking in many nutrients and enzymes.

> Therefore, I find that one has to find the approach that suits him/her, though a vegeterian approach is the solution for many, but not all.

Hmmm. I knew i was going to end up proselytyzing about vegetarianism if I started this thread;) Don`t want to bore you but actually although this rings true on the surface it doesn`t make sense with a closer look. There are a few extreme cases where a small quanttiy of meat or dairy is recommended for healing but otherwise the overwhelming scientifi evidence is taht eating meat and dairy is bad for you. Aside form the problems of excess protein, fat and calories the extent meat, poultry and fish is seriously contaminated by manmade poisons is so well documented there is no longer any logical justification for saying any of these are good for your health. There is nothing found in these things that cannot be easily and safely found in appropriate quantity and form in a live food diet.
Incidentally, fruit and vegatbles that are picked arenot dying.
The age we live to and the health we enjy is determined by the quantity and condition of enzymes in the gut.
The whole point about the diet described above using bioactive foods such as sprouted beans and seeds, nuts, raw vegetables, and grain is that they provide their own enzymes leaving the body free to use its own limited supply for maintainign superior health. This is true of all human beings. It is only within this general one size fits all concept that individual variety actually occurs.
Cheers,
Buri

Greetings,
Craig. Yep, the contents of noodles and crackers here is beyond belief although some nrands are slightly better than others. They are also a dead foof, having been highly prcessed and then stored. The general problem for westerners in Japan which they are frequenlty unaware of is that Japanes epeople have a much higher tolerance for salt which is presnet at dangerous levels for us in a greta dela of the food here. Paul Pitchford, one of the worlds leading experts on combining oriental and wetsern food science, suggetss that the massive consumption of salt here is alrgely responsible for the rigidly hierachical culture and inflexibilty up and down social structures.
The sucicie rate is a more complex issue. Contributing factors for me include: loss of spiritual direciton/values during 50 year economic rush; lifetime pressure to conform; lack of warmth and contact in human relations (espcially lack of sex); no guarantee of a future for young people making oolder peoples relentless demand to study or work harder merely a pointles sform of tirture; massive increaes in unemployment and drops in salaries; a culture where bullying is common at many ages and fof course SMAP.
Cheers,
Buri
he he ... looks like you opened a real can of worms here, but a fun discussion! My thoughts are just this: strive for a balance. Anything to excess will be bad. And even McDonalds can be good. (Try living in China, struggling to eat well, after days of disappointing meals, at least something from Miccie D's is standardized!!!) I've seen the movie recently "August Rush" and am intrigued by the idea 'You have to love music even more than food.'
On the argumentative side, organic food has killed more people than inorganic food (people get sick from bugs, diseases, etc that pesticides take care of). I actually got sick being a vegetarian because I didn't know enought about vegetarian nutrition. My vitamin D levels shot down to basically nothing over two years. Being too exhausted to practice is no fun.

That being said, I'm a still pesce-vegetarian, although I don't follow any of the books of the Bible rejected by the Councils of Hippo and Carthage. :)

Greetings,
>On the argumentative side, organic food has killed more people than inorganic food (people get sick from bugs, diseases, etc that pesticides take care of).

What an odd comment. The food doesn`t kill poeple and there is little or no extant research or argument to support the idea that organic foods are dangerous whereas if you read soemthing like Diet for a healthy planet or Cousens `Conscious Eating` then actual real research is cited from reputable sources about the pesticides, hormones, heavy metals and the like which we are now all absorbing and their appalling effetcdts.

>I actually got sick being a vegetarian because I didn't know enought about vegetarian nutrition.

Yep. That is the problem. It isn`t just a question of giving up meat dairy.

>My vitamin D levels shot down to basically nothing over two years. Being too exhausted to practice is no fun.

Primary source is sunlight so it doesn`t really cocnern this diet. A healthy person has to spend time outside.
Cheers,
Buri

Greetings,
>And even McDonalds can be good.
Bonny, can you offer even one good thing about MacDonalds food?;)
Actually not eating is by far the healthier option, especially in China.
Oddly enough I am just into the third day of a fast and although yesterday was hell, today I feel light, balanced and alert with loads of extra energy. In his book `Conscious Eating` Cousens notes thta there is some ingrained resistance to fasting in America `because of the addiction to excess.`
Cheers,
Buri
Poor Buri, while you were fasting hard, I was busying bragging my backyard treats. I’m so sorry!
Greetings,
fasting is surptisingly easy. Have you ever done it , by choice...?
Another cool technique for violnists (also dvocated by Jesus, once a week) although I didn`t include it in the original wind up.....
Cheers,
Buri
I did it a few years ago. Once a month, I had a 24-hour fast, no solid food but some fruit juice and water. These days, everyone around me is into some kind of diet and that’s all they talk about at office and on lunch table. It’s like a new magic pill or something. I love quality food (and somewhat snobbish about it)and I eat well, and I intentionally not to join the diet revolution:-)
Greetings,
yep. That is the distinction between diet as in one of many stupid fats taht isn`t suited to your body type and in which all lsot weight is gained back and then sum, versus `diet` as in eating in harmony with the laws of nature and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Prunes,
Cheers,
Buri
My vegetarian daughter is now filming a documentary on prenuptiual female circumcision in an isolated Massai village in the Tazanian mountains.She has been in Africa since March and has already had to eat fish in order to survive I suspect that she's now going to have to eat some meat as well.However there is a big difference between free roaming meat and the mixture of chemicals that most processed foods contain.
I support eating safe organic food, but I don't think Bethanny's concerns should be so summarily dismissed.

In 1938, milk-borne outbreaks constituted 25% of all disease outbreaks from contaminated food and water. Today that figure is 1%, in part because of pasteurization, says Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. Food safety officials say raw milk has sickened hundreds of people with salmonella, E. coli and other bacteria. According to the (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,000 people fell ill from raw milk between 1998 and 2005. Two died.

Here are some articles about the raw milk debate, from which these statistics came:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-08-06-raw-milk-usat_x.htm
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hyCpKo_s8_ke7SIiljsBfnenBSlAD9181PGO4

There is some debate about whether organic food is more susceptible to dangerous E. coli.
The Organic Trade Association Says
http://www.ota.com/organic/foodsafety/ecoli.html
A University of Minnesota study concerning fecal E. coli in fresh picked produce by Mukherjee et al, published in the Journal of Food Protection (Vo. 67, No. 5, 2004), found that the percentage of E. coli prevalence in certified organic produce was similar to that in conventional samples. However, it did find a marked difference in the prevalence of E. coli between the samples from certified and non-certified organic farms. “Ours is the first study that suggests a potential association between organic certification and reduced E. coli prevalence,” the authors wrote. They noted that the results of the study “do not support allegations that organic produce poses a substantially greater risk of pathogen contamination than does conventional produce.”

Hi Buri,

I enjoyed your response to my comments very much. Yes, I see your points on many things. Personally, I eat a fruit and vegetable based diet with small amounts of meat or fish, grains and dairy (mostly cultured, which for me is easier to digest). I find that without meat or fish at one meal of the day, my metabolism does not function as well. However, I need to point out that the meat I consume is free-range lamb or game, which is easily available here in the province of Québec. In time I have developed certain habits. I tend to follow an old rule used by many of my European friends in never eating meat or grains in the same meal. Like many people, I don't digest regular wheat well, but like to eat other grains like spelt or rice.

Back to overall rules though, I will take several examples. I have many friends/colleagues who switched to vegetarian or rather meatless diet and felt great. When asked for fun, all said they were bloodtype A. I have others who enjoyed great weightloss believe it or not on Atkins after years of problems on a diet that resembled the macrobiotic diet. All were bloodtype O. Two of them were borderline diabetics and managed to get problems of weight, blood sugar and skin under control only when they stopped consuming grains on a daily basis. Now, the incidence is strange.

All that said, I find much truth in the idea that a diet based mostly on fruits and vegetables is the best for all. But on the topic of grains vs meats (by this I mean meat, poultry, game and fish), I am witness to too many varients in people around me (but consistent on certain groups of individuals) to find an overall all-inclusive result.

Cheers!

P.S. I agree though that most food is unnecessarily manipulated and loaded with poisonous crap. When people need to do this is beyond me. Like an old American Indian friend used to say about his culture vs most Western culture: "You work against nature while we prefer to cooperate with it."

Hi again Buri!

All that said, I am glad that you brought up this interesting and fascinating topic that has been a long-time interest to me, and would like to thank you for it!

Cheers!

"(NA) friend used to say about his culture vs most Western culture: "You work against nature while we prefer to cooperate with it."

Role models from the stone age, coming up next!

Greetings,
>I support eating safe organic food, but I don't think Bethanny's concerns should be so summarily dismissed.

Actually I do becaue it was so sweeping and unsopprted. Read like propaganda for the pesticide industry. The example you quote is interesting and at least supported by data. However, I can@t say I fidn it particlalry germane sicne I don`t include any kind of dairy as aprt of a helathy diet ;)

>In 1938, milk-borne outbreaks constituted 25% of all disease outbreaks from contaminated food and water. Today that figure is 1%, in part because of pasteurization, says Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C.

I think this statistic is extremely weak. Of course the percentage dropped. The increase in food posining from factory farmed meat has increased top the point where the figurre is insignificant The contetx is diffenret from 1938. In 1990 the indicence of bacterial salmonella was 2 and a half mioolin cases per year including an rstimated one and half million hospitralizations and 9000 deaths (see 1990 Pacific Sun-Project Censored Rating).
>According to the (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,000 people fell ill from raw milk between 1998 and 2005. Two died.

This statistic is also absolutley minimal although I hate to dimisnh peoples suffering.

Then ther eis the problem of premature sexual development due to eating hr\ormone rich produicts. (Saenz-Journal of the Puerto Rico Medical Association 1982) . Or try Robbins reaerach on the subject of British Schoolgirls in Diet for a New America. Also studies of transfer of Leukemia to primates from cows (cancer Journal for Clinicians-Kin Shim) . Twenty percnet of Danish cows have leukemia and stides have show a positve correlation between this and childhood leukemia.

Food safety officials say raw milk has sickened hundreds of people with salmonella, E. coli and other bacteria.

>There is some debate about whether organic food is more susceptible to dangerous E. coli.

Actually the debate is irrelevent. the obnly useful infomrtaion here would be a well controlled massive long term study of whether people eating organic food were sickebned from e coli to a gretae rextent than a simlialr group etc etc. No such study exists. And the original sweeping statement that more people died from organic food is weird since organic food eater sare stll in a minority and the fiood would have to be pretty lethal in general, not just in terms of e coli to prove that organic food is a killer.

>by Mukherjee et al, published in the “do not support allegations that organic produce poses a substantially greater risk of pathogen contamination than does conventional produce.”
Right.

But one could go on from ther.As you know, pesticides, herbicide sand additives in our food have bene luinked to cancer, weakened immune system, allerfies, neurotoxicity, hyperactivity in children and brain allergies.
In 1985 1000 people were posiened by the peticide Temik in watermelon. Do the still births count as deaths I wonder? Next it wa sAlar. In 1987 the National Academuy of Sciences conclude dthat iin our lifetime pesticides in American food causes more tahn one million additonal cases of cancer. I think that counts as death! NRDC in the Amicus Journal reoprts that 2.6 bilion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the usA and that nearly all Americans have resues of DDT, Chlrdane, heptachlor, aldrin and dieldrin in their bodies. Dieldrin is five times more poten than DDT and in 1975 the council on Environment stated that diledrin was founfd in 99.5% of Americans, 96% of all meat, fish and poultry and in 85% of dairy products. It is one of the most potent carcinogen known to man.The most potwent is Dioxin of which millions of pounds have bene spread on American soiland the Epa has officially acknowledged taht it is stored by animals that we eat. It is perhaps worth pondering the fatc thaqt deaths fronm cancer in the US hacve risen from less than 1 percent at the beginning of the 19th century to one in four today.
The sweeping statement about pesticides also ignores a much bigger and sadder glaobal picture. The so called green revolution resultes in loss of biodiversity, the deadly trap of harvesting monocrops, traditional and efficent farming methods, widespread poverty starvation and yes death from malnitrition and all its implicatiosn while locking the poor in a vicious cycle of ex@ploitation by the pesticide industry which is one of the most ruthless and profiteering instituitions on the planet.
For an in depth study of this Susan George`s `The Green Revolution` is very scary. That is a hell of a lot of death and suffering compared to an
unsubstantied sideswipe at helathy farming.
And it still doesn`t have much to do with te link between the flow of divine light within one facilitted by eating accoridng to genuine scientific principles which are indeed a gift from the divinity.
Cheers,
Buri

It took me 7 years after had immigrated to Canada to get myself organized for my first family reunion in Shanghai. I was shocked by all the changes, but the biggest one was the changes happened to the food in the market there. Not only the variety became very westernized but also all larger in size and blander in taste. You could no longer find all those most delicious Chinese vegetables that I can’t even name in English, but they’ve been carefully selected and passed down for hundred if not thousand years. All gone! Seeds are like that, if they aren’t been preserved, the whole variety or the specie is wiped out from the earth. Those large seed companies are just as aggressive as those tobacco companies. They would for instance sell the farmers those modified non-disease-resistant seeds to the farmers by giving them the pesticide along as bonus. Go figure! The food market in China was so huge and it didn’t take long to give a very different face to Chinese food. This is one of the scariest things I saw back in the early 90s and this was when I started to search everywhere for quality heirloom, open-pollinated and non-GMO seeds when I came back here and started to grow my own food in my yard. I still have to buy food from the market but I feel a little bit more self-reliant this way.
Greetings,
Christian, glad you are enjoying the blog…
The more I study and experiment with diet the more I think how incredibly complex the whole thing can get. I think the worst thing that en route to vegetarianism is that it wan`t/isn`t generally approached in any appropriate way. I think in many cases (if not a scary majority) people who have tried being vegetarian , in the sense of giving up meat and compensating in an instinctive way have had terrible problems. The most obvious being giving up meat but meeting their emotional/rajasic hungers through dairy products. In many cases it was probably safer to stay with meat!
There are many people who make a careful switch to a certain kind of diet be it Atkins, the Zone or blood type and experience significant improvements in health and that is definitely not to be sneezed at. It is the fact that in the majority of these cases there is also usually an equivalent number who fail or get worse and these are never referred to in the books or programs espousing such an approach. What I believe this means is that there are a much deeper set of scientifically verifiable systems within the body which dictate the optimum eating habits of the individual and explain consistently why something works for someone and not for somebody else. The most clear and well researched work in this area I have found concerns the principle of Physiologic conditions which has the following key principles:
1) any nutrient and food can have opposite biochemical effects in different initials.
2) And symptom or degenerate condition can be caused by opposite biochemical imbalances
3) 3) diseases are the result of underlying metabolic imbalances, so treatment involves correcting this.
4) In a particular individual there is one homeostatic regulatory system that dominates these other systems
5) Which system dominates will determine how a particular diet or nutrient behaves in ones system
6) To select a proper diet one needs to know the dominant system and metabolic type.

The main systems identified by Wolcott are:
1) autonomic
2) oxidative
3) dosha (from ayurvedic)
4) acid /alkaline (cf macrobiotics)
5) endocrine gland (which is dominant)
6) lipo oxidative
7) blood type.

It’s interesting you mention blood type. Cousens has done a great deal of informal research on this question and has found no correlation with meat versus vegetarianism although there is actually a popular theory that type os do well on high protein-flesh diet. Personally I’m an o and that would kill me in a week.. The significance of blood is that certain types of foods that e consider super healthy are extremely harmful to certain blood types because of their lectin content. Wheat germ, for example, can be very dangerous to type M, salmon type B, sunflower seeds type 0 and so on.
So what I think happens is that when we try following standard vegetarian guidelines the result is often poor because we are actually doing something rather bad for our body that looks good on paper and much o\f the problem is within the protein/crab ratios. So if you change to a vegetarian diet but don’t have any protein then it is quite logical to find that you are actually much healthier eating something like you describe your diet which keeps this balance fairly well. Plus you are avoiding the lectins or grains that really mess you up.
Nonetheless, it is not an optimal diet by any means because the food is lacking fundamental energy and needs to be digested in the lower gut thereby using up precious enzymes that could better be employed keeping your repertoire ticking over.
So the whole thing becomes so complex at times its no wonder so many people just give up and go back to what is considered normal or healthy only within the context of traditions that have never truly been examined or do not reflect the changing global conditions (which are now so fundamental fractured its mind blowing)
However, you might be interested in a simple technique for helping evaluate the effect of food on your body. You probably heard of the ring test. As an example, take a wide selection of fruit. First do a baseline test by squeezing your thumb and forefinger together and having someone try to prize them apart. Like me, you are probably strong at this) Now hold something like a automatic car door opener or cordless phone in your left hand and have you r friend try to open the right hand. Its easy. Now experiment with the various fruit. You body will indicate quite clearly what you should and should not eat. I can eat avocados but am cautious with oranges…
You can do this with any food. It’s a very reliable test。You can also use it to diagnose the condition of most organs in the body by placing your left hand on that organ. I am not sure if one can use it to select a good violin;)
Cheers,
Buri

vegetarian diet but don’t have any protein

should read
don`t have enough or have too much protein...

Yixi, the same thing happened here. U.S. families used to pass down their own varieties of corn, squash, beans and so on in their gardens. In this area that was probably all gone by the 80s. In my parents time it was the rule though. My grandmother grew a kind of flower with little exploding seed pods for the kids to play with, that I've never seen anywhere else.

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