Food Energetics

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 Gagn. 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 Gagns 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. Gagn gently helps dislodge this dogma and gets us to see a wider view of what food is, what it isnt, 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 *

Steve Gagn is a natural health and nutrition counselor who began researching and teaching food energetics in 1972. He teaches throughout the United States and Europe and continues to study traditional cultures and their dietary practices in remote parts of the world. He lives in Colorado.

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: Appetites 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 Foods Essential Character 17 Foods 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