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It occurs very soon to anyone who occupies oneself with nourishment that this problem arouses a great deal of controversy. As civilized countries have great food storage during peaceful periods, it is generally assumed that our nourishment is as good as it could be. However, this opinion has opponents who think that this is true only considering the quantity of food, but not its quality. They contend that we should recover our initial mode of nourishment. But what this “initial mode of nourishment” is? Some scientists say it should be meat, others affirm it should be bread. And what kind of meat or bread? Some consider it evident that the real bread is bread of coarse grinding with bran; others warn against such coarse food and recommend to eat exclusively wheat bread made of flour of fine grinding as it doesn’t complicate digestion. And the rest mind that people should refuse bread at all.

Many people believe that only uncooked food is healthy (the so-called “uncooked plants diet”): evidently, no animal cooks its food. However, there are opponents of this point of view who assume that exactly due to cooking food is better digested; raw food, on the contrary, is too heavy. There is another violent controversy: what fat is better and what is more dangerous: butter or margarine? Such examples are numerous. Who is right in the end?

Modern man demands evidences. But there is a paradox that frequently opponents draw examples from their own experience. For instance, one tells about oneself that one was ill for a long time and recovered only after one has come to keep to a certain diet recommended to one. And then one draws a conclusion that everybody would be sound if keeping to the same diet. Sure enough, there is no reason to neglect one’s personal experience, but the problem remains if other people’s organism would react to the same diet correspondingly.

Science concerns itself with the problems of nourishment for a long time. Today it’s precisely determined what a person needs: how many calories, proteins, fats, etc. But one should be aware that these investigations can’t be completed: there will always emerge some new information that will spread all over the world and oust or disprove the previous conceptions.

For example, firstly scientists believed that only the core of a grain, that is rich in starch, is nourishing, while its outer coat is absolutely useless and can’t be digested. Now it’s proved that only the “useless” coat is essential for the process of digestion. Only several year before it was considered that only vegetable fats are healthy, and adipose should be avoided. Now scientists have found out that adipose of cold-water fish, like mackerel, has valuable qualities for infarction prevention. And such kind of fat in any case can’t be regarded vegetable. Besides, scientists often propose that people need definite essential amino acids that are constituents of meat first of all, so purely vegetarian nourishment can’t be full-fledged. On the other hand, researches frequently show that vegetarians do not suffer from atrophy of any functions and on the whole demonstrate stronger health than other people. And at the same time it doesn’t prove that the results of scientific investigations are false! But they are usually too abstract, lopsided and overloaded with unscientific factors.

What should we do? Try all the possible variants one by one? Or just reject everything that causes the least doubt? This dilemma was familiar even to Mark Twain (1855 – 1910) who wrote: “The safest food is water taken in moderate doses”. But even this statement is not unconditional now: in many places drinking water is not very good for drinking – due to either strong chlorination, or contamination with agricultural pest-killers and fertilizers, or after being several times used as city water or for industrial purposes. Thus, water is also not a safe kind of food. Even the modern obligatory methods of water purification are very problematic. Rather efficient in disinfecion, they can’t restore it in its initial quality as the source and carrier of life. Every dweller of draughty regions knows this quality of water from ones own experience: no water – no life! However, the question is if the radically modified water that most people have to drink nowadays could be a source of life power – in contrast to pure spring water. Today even rainwater falling from the sky is doubtful, and a notion of “acid rains” has appeared lately.

How can we understand the above-mentioned contradictions and work out our own opinion? The most impressive scientific success or the most precise result can, of course, be nominally correct, but still having nothing to do with the essence of the problem. Contradictions bring to the light the main problem of modern human life: people are aware of a plentitude of details, one is even able to measure and vary them, still, the essence of the problem is left unstudied and frequently undiscovered. In nourishment the question is: why should we eat at all? Why does a person die deprived of food? Why can’t a person live exclusively on water, salt, stones, wood? Not by chance a notion of foodstuff has originated (if we make a loan translation of the word from German, we would get “means of life” – Lebensmittel – that is closer to the essence of meaning), the things that transmit life to people. Evidently, stone, wood or salt don’t contain life and can’t transmit it to people. For sure, there are exceptions. For instance, timber-worm feeds on wood and it supplies it with life power, though wood is unable to give life to people. In short, we can formulate the following thesis:

Only that food is vital that contains life.

Modern man can consider such a point of view new, but it is very ancient. Here are two lines by Angelus Silezius (1624 – 1677):

…..

(Our body lives not only on bread –

But on the Eternal Word, Life, Spirit – inside it.)

(It’s possible that initially there was not “Word”, but “Light”, though “Word”, “The Word of God” was in everyday use then and it was more convenient to use it than he word “Light” that is, no doubt, closer in meaning.)

Thereby, Angelus Silezius wanted to bring home to us that not the substance as it is supports us, but its “inner content”, in other words, its “vital power” – Life and Spirit.

The thought that together with bread one tastes “The Word of God” and “Spirit” seems at least heretical. Does a modern man know what is Life and Spirit? And still these two simple words contain more wisdom than the multitude of distorted facts familiar to us today. In any case, before the epoch of scientific and technological revolution people understood that food is God’s gift and it’s a sin to throw them away. Now it has become common practice. Earlier food wastes were given to pigs or used for making compost but not dumped in tons.

In the course of natural-science investigations people lost their ability to view life as power. They have concentrated upon substance, that is, “wrapping”, while life is a very special kind of power that can combine only with definite kinds of substance.

We should distinguish between means of life – food and so-called dainties that give only taste and can’t provide life power or nourishment. They satisfy only our voluptuousness, give us a kind of delight and almost always are harmful for the organism: destroy or weaken its functions. They are, first of all, coffee, black tea, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and many other restorative media.

Therefore, food as the source of life power is defined by the life it contains. As nowadays it’s difficult to define life as power, they usually point the quantity of calories per 100 ml on milk labels, for example. In other words, they provide information about the quantity of warmth extracted by combustion of a definite quantity of substance. (Frequently a “modern” unit is used – joule). That’s why the term “calorific value” or “power capacity” of food is used. These terms are correct, though they are misleading. When we deal with food, or means of life, it’s not the calorific value matters, but life maintenance, enrichment of the organism with life, support of its life power. Such substances as gasoline, wax, and paraffin have rather a high power capacity and calorific value but can’t serve as food. Product characteristics including the quantity of containing carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals and vitamins is also uninformative, as they don’t provide any information according the presence of life power in food, what is most prominent.

What food is rich in life power? As life can’t be defined like the quantity of calories, we should base ourselves upon the very notion of life.

An infant receives life power from its mother. Mother’s milk is the best nourishment for a child that suits him perfectly. Being about six months old, it can come to eat fruit, cereals, cow’s milk, etc. – food that contains life. But how does a cow get life? For sure, from its own food, from plants as cows are exceptionally herbivorous. It’s an indicative fact that people have always fed on animals that don’t eat meat themselves! What is the reason for it? A cow, for instance, eats grass, and a cat eats mice who, in their turn, feed on plants as well. To understand this fact we should recognize that only plants can produce new life to transmit to animals. Hence, eating animal meat we still get life power from plants they have processed. However, life in an animal is not initial, it is secondary, or “second-hand”. An animal organism doesn’t produce life itself, it takes it from plants, which, on their turn, receive it from sunshine that can be a product of Holy Spirit, as people of the past not without good reason considered. Therefore, plants contain much more concentrated life. If we eat meat of an animal who feeds on animal meat, we receive food, but not life power. Life, originating from sunshine, goes in this case a longer path: sunshine – plant – animal – animal – human being, losing the most part of its magnificent power. This is not a purely theoretical speculation; it has a great practical value. There can be a single conclusion: the most useful, vital food is vegetable.

The diagram above is an evidence for it: it shows in pounds the quantity of fodder (herbs) necessary for production of one pound of the corresponding meat. For instance, to get one pound of beef we need 9,5 pounds of grass. This throws a surprisingly new light upon the problem of food storage for the earth dwellers. If we use the same areas we use to grow food for pigs and cattle used as a source of meat now to produce cereals and vegetables for people, everybody will be supplied with enough food. The problem of food shortages would be eliminated. To make a conclusion, we should contend that vegetarian food contains immeasurably more life than meat. However, meat is very prominent as well. Below we will dwell upon it in detail.