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SYMBIOSIS
The Journal of Ecologically Sustainable Medicine
Healthy Earth, Healthy Eating
Vol 3, No 1
Welcome to the Inaugural Online
Issue of Symbiosis!
The Teleosis Institute is pleased to announce the first online issue of Symbiosis: The Journal of Ecologically Sustainable Medicine.
Because we can now offer more content, we are presenting this issue over the course of three months—November, December, and January. This issue's theme is “Healthy Earth, Healthy Eating: Why Human Wellness Depends on the Health of the Earth.”
The decision to shift to an electronic format was made for a number of reasons. Our intention in publishing a journal is to share exciting news and information about ecologically sustainable medicine with as many people as possible. Since a large number of people visit our website, we believe this format will make the journal accessible to a wider readership. All articles are available in PDF format.
Also, offering the journal online will be more ecologically and economically sustainable. Ecologically sustainable, because we will save trees, fossil fuel, and water as well as prevent air pollution. (See below.) Economically sustainable, because Teleosis will be able to use these savings to improve and increase our other programs and activities.
We hope you enjoy this issue in its new format and welcome your feedback (see email address at the end of each article)—about our shift to an electronic format, or about any of the topics in this issue.
Happy reading!
Joel Kreisberg, Executive Director of Teleosis
Candice Chase, Editor of Symbiosis
Publishing Symbiosis Online Saves:
Paper: 24 trees
Water: 12,068 gallons of water per year in paper production and printing
Energy: 6600 kilowatts in one year for printing alone (tree harvesting, traveling to lumber yard, making paper, traveling to printer, printing, traveling to consumer)
Oil: 380 gallons
Landfill Space: 3 cubic yards
Air Quality: Air pollutants reduced by 63 pounds.
Why Human Wellness Depends on the Health of the Earth
by Candice Chase
Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten—every piece of fruit—had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before?
Alison Luterman, “What They Came for”, SUN magazine
Part 1
The Origins of Natural Food and Health
The topic of food, diets, and health is certain to stimulate intense discussion, frequently inspiring what may seem like religious fervor. What is the best diet? Why are there so many competing opinions about what we should eat? Is it important to take supplements because agricultural practices have removed many nutrients and minerals from our soils? Do food additives and pollutants cause cancer? Even empirical research studies on such questions can be contradictory. The public often becomes frustrated in the search for a healthy and satisfying way to eat, and health care practitioners struggle with how best to advise their patients.
In Part 1 of this article we will explore some of the issues in the complex ecology of food and health, including food in the context of ecologically whole living systems, the origins of human diets, and how our modern diets differ from traditional hominin diets.
In Part 2, which will be presented in December, we’ll look at how the health of our water, soils, and forests affect the food we eat, some favorite foods that may be implicated in the process of global warming, and and implications of genetically modified foods.
While there are serious causes for concerns about dietary habits in the U.S., a strong and growing movement in organic agriculture offers reason for hope. The awareness of increasing numbers of people that a primarily plant-based, organic diet is good for humans is also good news for the Earth.
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Food As Medicine Program
An Interview with Susan Lord
Course Director, Center for Mind-Body Medicine
Susan B. Lord, MD, graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and practices Family Medicine. She has a dual appointment at Georgetown University School of Medicine in the Departments of Physiology and Biophysics and in Family Medicine. With a private practice in Washington, DC, she specializes in complementary and alternative medicine using mind-body approaches, nutrition, Gestalt psychotherapy, lifestyle counseling, and energy medicine.
Dr. Lord is a staff member at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, where she directs weeklong intensives in Food As Medicine for medical professionals. Recently, Symbiosis editor Candice Chase and intern Elli Aleece Smith attended the opening day of the training program, which was being held in Berkeley, California.
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- 65% of manic-depressive patients who combined fish oils with standard medications saw significant improvement in their condition after four months, compared to the 19% placebo (olive oil). (Stoll AL, Severus WE, Freeman MP, et al. Omega 3 fatty acids in bipolar disorder: A preliminary double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1999;56:407-412).
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Over the last 30 years, increasing numbers of Americans have experienced the limitations and adverse side effects of conventional medical care. Many are seeking care that integrates the best of conventional care with the most effective alternative and complementary therapies. In a 1997 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a survey indicated that 42% of all Americans were using such therapies as herbal supplements, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, and group support as part of their health care.
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Edward Bauman, M.Ed., Ph.D., a member of the ESM Network, is a groundbreaking leader in the field of whole foods nutrition, holistic health, and community health promotion. His desire to help nutrition professionals and clients find a healthy balance in our fast paced, stressful, and often toxic world that inspired Ed to create Bauman College, which offers students a unique opportunity to train professionally as a Nutrition Educator, Nutritional Consultant, or Natural Foods Chef.
With campuses in Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Penngrove, California, the curriculum at the college is based on a what Ed calls “Eating for Health,” a program that emphasizes fresh, seasonal, chemical-free, nutrient rich, organic foods. Students learn how to reduce dependency on the commercial food that often contributes to the degradation of both the human body and our environment.
Bauman College offers a comprehensive, integrated system of conventional and holistic health care that restores metabolic balance. Classes present an integrated, in-depth understanding of ways in which individual biochemistry and nutritional needs can vary; it’s an approach that focuses on individual needs, tastes, tolerances, and genetic tendencies in the context of nutrition counseling and food preparation. Graduates are prepared to create personalized diet treatment plans and providing leadership in promoting optimal health by helping others to prevent disease, manage chronic illness, and rediscover the joy of eating well.
The college is committed to a global orientation. “Traditional foods are nourished, bloodlines nurtured, and roots solidified,” says Ed. “Students are encouraged to look back several generations at the foods their ancestors ate. Each person has unique needs and tastes. Many current diets feature a one-size-fits-all ideology that often isn’t sensitive to individual differences or changes in season or health status.” Students at Bauman College explore many aspects of food, from nutritional value and the life-energy in fresh, whole foods, as well as the ceremonial significance of certain foods in different cultures. Celebrating nutritional diversity and cultural heritage, the college draws on the elements of Asian, Mediterranean, European, Hispanic, African, and American (especially the organic trend in California) food traditions.
Ed Bauman and the college he created are strongly committed to helping others actualize their physical, mental, and spiritual potential through the restoration of their personal and natural environment.
Ed Bauman teaches free workshops twice a month at various locations in the Bay Area. Bauman College is strongly affiliated with the National Association for Nutrition Professionals (NANP), which is working towards an accreditation process for holistic nutrition consultants that have completed coursework from a select number of reputable organizations.
URL Links
Bauman College
Edward Bauman
free workshops
National Association for Nutrition Professionals
Tools for Healthy Eating
System Requirements for
Sustainable Nutrition
Ed identifies seven “system requirements for sustainable nutrition”: maximize intake of nutrient-rich foods; minimize intake of nutrient-poor foods; maintain adequate hydration, natural light and fresh air; maintain proper acid-alkaline balance; maintain adequate gastrointestinal flora and fiber; minimize exposure to harmful substances in air, water, and food; and supplement essential nutrients not adequately provided by the diet.
Four Levels of Eating: A Process, Not a Method
Ed Bauman identifies four levels of eating. He is committed to increasing public awareness about healthy foods as the very basis of health and well being.
Level One: Eating for Pleasure gratifies the immediate need to satisfy hunger and can be a healthy way to enjoy the gifts of the earth and one’s companions. On the negative side, however, eating only for pleasure can become a self-medicating process in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to ease pain and suffering.
Level Two: Eating for Energy, while addressing a genuine physical need, can lead to eating fast food meals on-the-go meals. In this approach to eating, quality is often disregarded and health problems may result.
Level Three: Eating for Recovery involves cautious and deliberate food choices that tend to be more natural, less processed, and of some medicinal value. However, following a recuperative diet for too long can result in overly rigid eating habits.
Level Four: Eating for Self-Responsibility or Conscious Eating involves eating with awareness of the effect of various foods on the body, and using this awareness and one’s intuition as guides to choosing healthful types and amounts of food. Conscious eating allows for flexibility and a deeper connection with the natural web of life.
The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help
Save Your Life and Our World, by John Robbins
Reviewed by Joel Kreisberg, DC, CCH
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Our power comes from our ability to respond to and nurture life, to cooperate with, care for, and cherish natural systems. (p. 371)
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The relationship between food, nutrition, and health is a hot topic today. Hundreds if not thousands of books giving us advice about diet and nutrition fill our bookstores and nutrition centers. Yet most do not speak to one of the most important aspects of these topics: the inextricable connection between high-quality food and the health of our environment. John Robbins’ new book, The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, is one of the very few that explores the consequences of industrial farming. Robbins, author of the 1987 book Diet for a New America, offers a compelling argument for choosing our foods wisely. His overriding message is simply, “Choose a vegetarian diet.” The underlying arguments, however, are anything but simple.
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