Description
Book SynopsisFood is more than simply fuel. It imparts a living wisdom that is beyond the science and mechanics of calories, grams, and nutrient values. Ancient peoples, through their relationships with the plants and animals providing their food, understood that their food conveyed the unique energetic qualities of its source, such as swiftness from wild deer and groundedness from root vegetables. With the rise of agribusiness and industrial food production, people have become disconnected from the sources of their food and are no longer able to register the subtle rhythms, harmony, and energies that food can convey. This separation has thrown the basic human-food relationship out of balance--to the detriment of human consciousness. In Food Energetics, Steve Gagné shows how to revitalize our connection to food and remedy our physical and psychic imbalances with the wisdom of food energetics. He provides a comprehensive catalog of foods and their corresponding energetic properties and explains how each food affects us at the deepest spiritual level. By demonstrating how to plan meals that incorporate both dominant and compliant foods, he shows how to provide truly healthy cuisine that nourishes the body and the soul.
Trade Review“
Food Energetics is a comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and absolutely essential explanation of the spiritual dimensions of food. If you believe in the concept of living things having a soul, this book describes the soul qualities in all of our foods. Here is the ultimate explanation of the term soul food.” * Russell Mariani, author of Healing Digestive Illness *
“Nobody understands the power, magic, and impact of food better than Steve Gagné. Prepare to read, eat, and be transformed!” * John David Mann, coauthor of The Go-Giver:A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea *
“This book is exceptional in the field of diet today. Steve Gagné’s deep, informed perspective helps elucidate the thoughts of Michael Pollan and gives us access to a simple, user-friendly way of understanding food.” * Joshua Rosenthal, author of Integrative Nutrition *
“One of the most important insights for anyone who has personally experienced the diet/disease, diet/symptom connection is the awareness of inevitable food diet dogma--meaning, the initial tendency for any student of natural health to create fairly hardedged principles around what is Right Food and Wrong Food and believe them as incontrovertibly true for the rest of their life and for all of humanity. Generally at that moment, a student of natural health will join one of the groups that best fit those beliefs, be it the All Raw group, or Vegetarianism, or Macrobiotic/Vegan/ Natural Hygiene/Paleolithic or any other of the well-known food philosophies. Gagné gently helps dislodge this dogma and gets us to see a wider view of what food is, what it isn’t, and how it has been used by healthy cultures throughout the world to heal and stay healthy. Whether you are just waking up to the realization that most of your symptoms are diet related or are an old salt in the study of the food and health connection,
Food Energetics is simply a must-have book.” * Scott Ohlgren, author of The 28-Day Cleansing Program *
Table of Contents
Introduction Part I. Energetics
1 Quality and Quantity: Beyond the Realm of the Senses
2 The Decline and Fall of Energetics
3 Enter the Age of Sanity
4 Your Most Intimate Relationship
Part II. Choosing Your Food
5 The Essence of Choosing
6 Habit: Appetite’s Nemesis
7 Choosing with Your Senses
8 Circumstantial Choosing
9 Choosing with Your Personality
10 Choosing from Reaction
11 Choosing from the Bigger Picture
12 Big Picture or Big Brother?
13 More “Choosing Under the Influence”: Concepts, Advice, and Dietary Trends
14 Five Familiar Faces
Part III. Working Models
15 Character Study
16 Food’s Essential Character
17 Food’s Temperament
18 A Basic Food Character Chart
19 Shaping Characters
20 Preparations
Part IV. The Cast of Characters
21 A Symphony of Flora and Fauna
22 A Matter of Meat
23 A Chicken in Every Pot
24 Birds of Another Feather
25 Living on the Egg
26 Mammals
27 Creatures of the Deep
28 Dairy Foods
29 The Animated Life of Plants
30 Some Unusual Characters
31 The Staff of Life: Cereal Grains
32 Beans/Legumes
33 Nuts and Seeds
34 Fruits
35 Condiments and Seasonings
36 Algae
Part V. A Forbidden History of Food and Agriculture
37 The Origins of Agriculture
38 The Prehistory and Reemergence of Agriculture: Reconsidering Human Origins
39 Traditional Ancestral Diets
40 Cacao: The Essence of Chocolate
41 The Gift of Grain and Flowering Plants
42 Dangerous Brains: The “Lo-Carb” Fad and Diet Extremism in the Twenty-first Century
Part VI. A Call to Common Sense
43 The Golden Spiral of Traditional Foods
44 Choosing a Healthy Diet
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
Index
