Day 81: The Spectrum of Diet
An Evolutionary Dietetic with David Rainoshek, M.A., Post-Vegan Health Advocates
Welcome to Day 81!
What follows is my brief synopsis of The Spectrum of Diet, which I have been teaching and developing for clients and students over the last decade. What you are about to see began to take form in 2006, when I began studying Ken Wilber’s work while finishing my M.A. in Vegan/Live Food Nutrition with Dr. Gabriel Cousens, M.D., working as his Research Assistant on There is a Cure for Diabetes.
After many years of nutritional practice, research, writing, and coaching, I have arrived at an overall map of the various ways we eat. I call it The Spectrum of Diet: Integral Transformative Nutrition, which is an Integral approach to Diet, Nutrition, and Health.
In our modern era, most of us are dietarily confused, caught between a dizzying carnival of make-believe mythic cereal-box and fast-food characters, reductionistic-science flavorist-created Excitotoxin-laden foods superstimulating our biochemistry, ad-agency sexed up electric kool-aid commercialization, conflicting scientific studies professing the importance of food and lifestyle – no, genes! – on our health. We live in a wasteland of food and nutritional/medical/holistic health approaches, in bad need of a good map, a vehicle (better than the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile) to navigate the territory, with directions more fundamental, and all-inclusive…
THE SPECTRUM OF DIET (TM)
Inspired by the Integral Approach of Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute, and using my expertise (both personally and professionally) across the Spectrum of Diet, from Junk Food (I used to pour sugar in my Coca-Cola) all the way to Raw/Live Plant-Based Nutrition and an Integral Dietetic, I have used Ken’s Integral Approach as a guiding means to develop The Spectrum of Diet: Integral Transformative Nutrition. For a good overview of Ken’s work, visit www.IntegralLife.com and www.KenWilber.com.
When you count all the foods, diets, and advocates out there, what you find are dizzying thousands of possible dietary permutations—many of which give you a piece of the puzzle, but don’t offer much help in putting their own suggestions into a larger dietary perspective.
One is left without a map of the territory, and is therefore often lost in a dietary wasteland for decades, still no better suited in understanding how far up the Spectrum one needs to go—or can go—to transform their health challenge, and in short create increasing order and depth as a holon (an organized whole of integrated, lower-order wholes).
Every dietary methodology in existence will fit predominantly into one stage, or level of the Spectrum of Diet.
While many diets and practitioners will advocate higher levels or condone “moderation” at lower levels, we should think in terms of the center of gravity of a diet or practitioner.
As we will discover, when it comes to prevention of disease, and particularly reversal of our health challenges, the conventional understanding of moderation and its’ attractive appearance of intelligent balance is anything but prudence and wisdom, and more like arrested development, reductionism, quadrant absolutism…
Even integrative nutritional approaches generally lack an understanding of personal interior and collective interior developmental states and stages (such as one’s stages of cognitive, moral, interpersonal, values, or worldview development and a culture’s development of collective worldviews).
A GROWTH HIERARCHY
The Spectrum of Diet can be functionally used as a growth hierarchy of dietary development, essentially based on a continuum from low life-force foods to high life-force foods, or shallow food heaps and holons to Deep Food holons (or Deep Foods, as I call them), with benefits that arise internally and externally for individuals and groups, including the individual-interior, exterior-physical, cultural, and social).
For our discussion here, this hierarchy is suited to westernized cultures who have progressed—ha-ha!—far enough to have seen the near simultaneous arising of both ends of the spectrum, Twinkees to Spirulina, Junk Food to and Raw/Live Plant-Based and finally Juice Feasting (which is more of a periodic Life Practice).
A CRITICAL METHODOLOGY
The Spectrum of Diet, once established, becomes a critical methodology for assessing the nutritional approach of practitioners or even activists (social or cultural) aiming to heal specific conditions (individual, collective, ecological, etc).
Every practitioner or advocate will find their center of gravity somewhere on the Spectrum of Diet, and that can help us identify where they are doing well, and where they may be partial vis-à-vis goals of health in any quadrant, line, level, state, and type.
INTERVIEW: KEVIN GIANNI INTERVIEWS DAVID RAINOSHEK on THE SPECTRUM of DIET (2011)
After Kevin Gianni’s admirable Great Health Debate in 2011, I contacted my colleague Kevin to share my insights and experiences with the raw food diet over the past 10 years or so. With so many knowledgeable - yet seemingly divergent - nutritional perspectives and practices offered during the Great Health Debate, I thought it might be helpful for a conversation on how to bring it all together for everyone.
We chatted on the phone for a while, set up and interview, and this was my first public explanation of The Spectrum of Diet including a stage beyond Raw/Live Vegan, that of practicing an Integrated or Integral Approach to Food and Nutrition.
What Kevin and I recorded was a 2 hour interview, which you can enjoy and download below to get a more conversational presentation of The Spectrum of Diet.
SHORT SYNOPSIS OF MAIN POINTS on THE SPECTRUM of DIET
In this short synopsis of the Spectrum of Diet, I will be using some ideas from the work of American philosopher and writer Ken Wilber. If you have not read the work of Ken Wilber, there are terms and conceptions used below that may need some unpacking for you. I highly suggest reading Ken Wilber’s book A Theory of Everything to get an excellent background on the Integral perspectives I am applying to what follows.
Okay, here we go:
The developmental line of nutrition in westernized societies unfolds as a stages progression, involving a shift in values from self care to universal care; or from me to us to all of us. Seeing nutrition as a line of development is a very, very useful orientation. One could argue, however, that with the prevalence of infant formula use such as Similac, and parents feeding their kids Coca-Cola that we are almost starting at the Junk Food level).
Each stage of the Spectrum of Diet involves including and transcending, with the subject of one stage becoming the object of the subject of the next, and playing out the four factors for vertical transformation, Fulfillment, Dissonance, Insight, and Opening.
Looked at from the perspective of The Great Nest of Spirit (matter to body to mind to soul to spirit), food is lower, and thus more fundamental to higher growth and development up the Great Nest. If nutritional development is not taken into account, it can act as a stage pathology that will prevent higher growth.
The predominant orientation to diet and nutrition is translative (make me happy with whatever food I want) as opposed to transformative (help me develop my health, AQAL).
Health is more importantly an ability instead of a state. Health is the ability of a Holon to maintain and restore order, and not merely a state of apparent wellness.
A food or dietary approach that honors the most depth in each quadrant (interior, exterior, individual, and collective), and considers the development of other developmental lines and their stages, states, and types are Deep Foods. See these 4 quadrants below:
We can also speak of diet and nutrition in terms of Depth and Span: Caloric Span and Nutrient Depth. The western diet has pathological Caloric Span, and insufficient Nutrient Depth. The higher we move up the Spectrum of Diet, the more appropriate the Caloric Span is, and the deeper the Nutrient Depth can be.
Flatland nutrition is the predominant methodology in the western world – and is RH reductionism (see the two right-hand quadrants in the image at left) that arose with orange modernity (or scientific materialism focused on or held as more real physical externals rather than immaterial internals of individuals and groups).
Foods that themselves are deep holons, and maintained as such through growth, delivery, and preparation will maintain order of the human holon.
The Law of Complexity and Consciousness is definitely in play when it comes to food and its effects on human development – including stages of consciousness.
The Law of Complexity and Consciousness was coined by Teilhard de Chardin to signify the way evolutionary unfoldings occur in the Kosmos. As the organized complexity of any holon increases, the amount of consciousness behind the development of that holon, and the behavior of the consciousness grows to higher levels of being and knowing. For example a single cell is wonderful, but a group of cells forming your liver is more wonderful, and more significant than your liver is the human being using it for even higher-level capacities and expressions). So, the “deeper” your food is, the more consciousness is contained within, and the greater mind it develops when eaten.
There exist potential stage pathologies, dietary shadows, and disowned dietary voices at every level of the Spectrum of Diet.
Boomeritis Diet and Nutrition is rampant. (Read Ken Wilber’s book Boomeritis for more on that topic). Basically, Boomeritis is a high capacity for knowledge and awareness combined with a rampant narcissism (self-love in ignorance of the needs of others). In other words, there is a lot of healthy eating going on out there for self alone… and yet many of us are focused on Eating as An Act of Love for all beings.
Every non-pathological nutritional practitioner speaks the truth from level of the Spectrum of Diet from which they are speaking.
The Spectrum of Diet, because of its approach using Integral Methodological Pluralism (basically, honoring a multitude of truth-claims and perspectives), serves as both a developmental sequence and a Critical Methodology including every dietary approach ever practiced in the western world, helping us understand the multiplicity of dietary methodologies, their place in the Spectrum of Diet, and thus where they are right, partial, and confused.
When it comes to masculine and feminine types, masculine freedom eats what it wants (leading to more opportunist male eaters and very hard-won nutritional discoveries among men), and feminine fullness can find itself fused with food (leading to more eating disorders among women and more conscious eating among women).
The mainstream media and thus much of society do not know the difference between prerational dietary madness (such as the bulimic vegan) and postrational dietary excellence (such as an informed Plant-Based or Integrated eater). We need a developmental and Integrated approach to dietetics that explains both health and pathologies of diet at every level of the Spectrum of Diet.
There are means to encourage and accelerate nutritional development through stages, without creating stages pathologies, and part of that involves The Spectrum of Diet’s proper placement in ILP.
The Spectrum of Diet has benefits at every stage:
Junk Food / Enjoyment
Fast Food/ Efficiency
Standard American / Communion
Whole Foods / Nutrition
Vegetarian / Kindness
Vegan / Compassion & Empathy
Raw-Live Plant-Based / Vibrance and Life
Integrated / Inclusiveness, Re-Integration, Understanding
As we move up the Spectrum, it is important to include each of the positive aspects (listed above) from our prior dietary practices. Your life is not one of dietary indiscretions – everything you have ever done has meaning and purpose that you can put to good service for yourself and others now and for the rest of your life!
For more on the Spectrum of Diet, be on the lookout for the book on this incredibly important topic from David Rainoshek!
See you in The Green Room!
Today’s Downloads
Online Articles
Victoria Boutenko on Not Being Raw by Victoria Boutenko
“I noticed feeling progressively more sensitive when talking to people who were struggling to stick to a 60%, 70%, 80%, or whatever % raw diet. All of a sudden, I realized that my book 12 Steps to Raw Foods (first edition) contained fanaticism about 100% raw foodism. Soon I completely revised this book and published the second edition, which I find to be a much kinder book, and perhaps more useful because of that. I shredded and recycled the left over copies of the old edition.”
Great Books
This section is done differently than all the other Great Books sections on JuiceFeasting.com. The following books are listed according to their Center of Gravity on the Spectrum of Diet, starting with Fast Food and moving through to Integrated. I have placed books that explore both the good news and the limitations of each stage of our dietary evolution. Enjoy!
Fast Food/Standard American
Whole Foods Books
Vegetarian/Vegan Books
Integrated Nutrition Books
Media, Films, & Documentaries
David Rainoshek on The Spectrum of Diet, Part 1
David Rainoshek on The Spectrum of Diet, Part 2
The China Study: A Critical Review | Denise Minger
Why Animal Fats Are Good for You | Chris Masterjohn
When A Vegetarian Diet Doesn't Work with Susan Schenck
Susan Schenck, author of Beyond Broccoli, discusses why she changed her mind about following a vegan diet and what you can do when a vegan/vegetarian diet doesn’t work — or stops working — for you. Topics will include:
+ Which nutrients are contained in animal foods but not in plants
+ Why a vegan diet is unsuitable for children and pregnant women
+ The benefits of consuming raw meat
+ Flaws in The China Study
+ Why the world would starve if everyone became vegetarian
Visit Susan’s website at www.livefoodfactor.com
Ram Dass: On Integrating All Planes of Being
This is one of my favorite talks by Ram Dass. This is a wonderful talk on making peace with your life, and upgrading your perspective on what it is you are here really doing.
Lierre Keith on Her Book: The Vegetarian Myth
David Getoff: Lierre Keith, the author of an excellent book entitled The Vegetarian Myth, was kind enough to let me interview her. She talks about her book and what prompted her to stop being a vegetarian and a vegan and to instead expose all the lies surrounding this unhealthy manner of eating. She also talks about the need for planet sustainability and how vegetarianism and agriculture, quite opposite to what is believed, are actually destroying everything that we hold dear. Listen and learn, then read her book for a great deal more information.
Just Eat Real Food with Jordan Rubin on Underground Wellness
Jordan Rubin, founder of Beyond Organic, stops by UW Radio to discuss what real food really is. Jordan has an amazing story to share about how he regained his health by way of eating real foods. Out of his experience came a vision to provide wholesome foods to the masses. The health and wellness community is very excited about Jordan’s lastest endeavor, as he will soon launch a company providing grass-fed meats, probiotic chocolate, cultured dairy, and more delivered to your doorstep.
[Documentary] Eating: Third Edition with Mike Anderson
This award-winning DVD covers a lot of ground very comprehensively – and now has subtitles in Spanish, French, German and English (for the deaf). Among the many highlights are interviews with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neil Pinckney, Dr. Ruth Heidrich and Dr. Joseph Crowe. Dr. Crowe and Dr. Esselstyn are from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and know something about heart disease. These interviews will convince you that cardiovascular disease, the #1 killer in America today, can be reversed by making simple changes to your diet. What you will get is a virtual one-on-one consultation with some of the world’s leading authorities on heart disease reversal. You will also hear from Dr. Heidrich who treated her breast cancer by simply changing her diet. The DVD also covers a wide-range of other health problems, including the reversal of adult-onset diabetes with diet. It also covers the impact of typical Western diets on the environment. The Eating DVD is used in hospitals and wellness clinics throughout the world to motivate people to change their diets and restore their health.
[Documentary on YouTube] Diet for a New America with John Robbins
In Diet for a New America, John Robbins, son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire, presents his theories about how an animal-based diet is killing Americans. Abandoning the wealthy lifestyle of his family, Robbins lived in a log cabin while subsisting on a simple diet of grains, and he eventually realized his calling as a dietary evangelist. He is not without a sense of humor; at one point he describes how he broke with his family by “walking away from our ice-cream-cone-shaped swimming pool.” But Robbins takes his mission seriously, buttressing his strong opinions about how America must reform its diet with commentary from physicians and academics, including some experts from Cornell University who appear on camera. Robbins himself visits farms where pigs, cattle, and chicken are raised in hellish conditions to make the point that modern meat production is inhumane. Much of this video comes across as being commonsense dietary advice, though some of the more extreme statements by experts are no doubt debatable. And there’s no denying that footage of heart surgeries and animals cramped into filthy cages could serve as strong reinforcement to those seeking a healthier diet. –Robert J. McNamara
[Documentary DVD] Fresh (2009)
“What an Integral Farming Practice looks like.” – David Rainoshek, M.A.
The underground documentary that became a massive grassroots success, FRESH is the embodiment of the good food movement.
FRESH outlines the vicious cycle of our current food production methods, while also celebrating the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are reinventing our food system, from a basketball player and former-executive-turned-urban-farmer to a poetic prophet of the fields who tells us: We can raise everything we need without any of the industrial food system. Director Ana Joanes takes her camera coast to coast and explores the lives of amazing Americans who are redefining the way we eat and how we live. FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur s 2008 Genius Award, sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan s book, The Omnivore s Dilemma, and supermarket owner, David Ball, who continues to challenge our discount superstore-dominated economy.
Both an enlightening documentary and a stirring call to action, FRESH transforms the way we look at food.
[Documentary] Forks Over Knives
What has happened to us? Despite the most advanced medical technology in the world, we are sicker than ever by nearly every measure.
Two out of every three of us are overweight. Cases of diabetes are exploding, especially amongst our younger population. About half of us are taking at least one prescription drug. Major medical operations have become routine, helping to drive health care costs to astronomical levels. Heart disease, cancer and stroke are the country’s three leading causes of death, even though billions are spent each year to “battle” these very conditions. Millions suffer from a host of other degenerative diseases.
Could it be there’s a single solution to all of these problems? A solution so comprehensive but so utterly straightforward, that it’s mind-boggling that more of us haven’t taken it seriously?
FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the so-called “diseases of affluence” that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering yet under-appreciated researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.
Dr. Campbell, a nutritional scientist at Cornell University, was concerned in the late 1960’s with producing “high quality” animal protein to bring to the poor and malnourished areas of the third world. While in the Philippines, he made a life-changing discovery: the country’s wealthier children, who were consuming relatively high amounts of animal-based foods, were much more likely to get liver cancer. Dr. Esselstyn, a top surgeon and head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, found that many of the diseases he routinely treated were virtually unknown in parts of the world where animal-based foods were rarely consumed.
These discoveries inspired Campbell and Esselstyn, who didn’t know each other yet, to conduct several groundbreaking studies. One of them took place in China and is still among the most comprehensive health-related investigations ever undertaken. Their research led them to a startling conclusion: degenerative diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even several forms of cancer, could almost always be prevented – and in many cases reversed – by adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet. Despite the profound implications of their findings, their work has remained relatively unknown to the public.
The filmmakers travel with Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn on their separate but similar paths, from their childhood farms where they both produced “nature’s perfect food”; to China and Cleveland, where they explored ideas that challenged the established thinking and shook their own core beliefs.
The idea of food as medicine is put to the test. Throughout the film, cameras follow “reality patients” who have chronic conditions from heart disease to diabetes. Doctors teach these patients how to adopt a whole foods plant-based diet as the primary approach to treat their ailments – while the challenges and triumphs of their journeys are revealed.
FORKS OVER KNIVES utilizes state of the art 3-D graphics and rare archival footage. The film features leading experts on health, examines the question “why we don’t know”, and tackles the issue of diet and disease in a way that will have people talking for years.
[Documentary DVD] Food, Inc with Eric Schlosser
For most Americans, the ideal meal is fast, cheap, and tasty. Food, Inc. examines the costs of putting value and convenience over nutrition and environmental impact. Director Robert Kenner explores the subject from all angles, talking to authors, advocates, farmers, and CEOs, like co-producer Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Gary Hirschberg (Stonyfield Farms), and Barbara Kowalcyk, who’s been lobbying for more rigorous standards since E. coli claimed the life of her two-year-old son. The filmmaker takes his camera into slaughterhouses and factory farms where chickens grow too fast to walk properly, cows eat feed pumped with toxic chemicals, and illegal immigrants risk life and limb to bring these products to market at an affordable cost. If eco-docs tends to preach to the converted, Kenner presents his findings in such an engaging fashion that Food, Inc. may well reach the very viewers who could benefit from it the most: harried workers who don’t have the time or income to read every book and eat non-genetically modified produce every day. Though he covers some of the same ground as Super-Size Me and King Corn, Food Inc. presents a broader picture of the problem, and if Kenner takes an understandably tough stance on particular politicians and corporations, he’s just as quick to praise those who are trying to be responsible–even Wal-Mart, which now carries organic products. That development may have more to do with economics than empathy, but the consumer still benefits, and every little bit counts. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
[Documentary DVD] Food Matters
Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food Hippocrates. That is the message from the founding father of modern medicine echoed in the controversial new documentary film Food Matters from Producer-Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch. With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what s wrong with our malnourished bodies, it s no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide sickness industry and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally. In what promises to be the most contentious idea put forward, the filmmakers have interviewed several world leaders in nutrition and natural healing who claim that not only are we harming our bodies with improper nutrition, but that the right kind of foods, supplements and detoxification can be used to treat chronic illnesses as fatal as terminally diagnosed cancer. The focus of the film is in helping us rethink the belief systems fed to us by our modern medical and health care establishments. The interviewees point out that not every problem requires costly, major medical attention and reveal many alternative therapies that can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than conventional medical treatments..