Mindful Eating: Whole Systems Thinking

Jill Davies, director of Sustainable Living Systems, is a pure food activist living in western Montana. She speaks and writes on current trends in the production of foods and medicines with a focus on GMOs, and on organic agriculture and seed saving.

Part 3

Continuing the theme of the Western Diet as the cause of Western chronic diseases, it would be helpful to understand the kind of thinking that has led to this predicament. In Mindful Eating part 1, I introduced the concepts of “reductionism” and “whole systems thinking.”

Our society is deeply immersed in reductionist thinking that is the result of our faith in the scientific method. Science studies variables in nature that can be isolated and then compared to a “control” in which the variable is absent, in order to observe the action of the variable. Thus we reduce the subject of study to its various parts.

This approach has also been called “mechanistic” because it treats living organisms as if they were machines in which the parts may easily be isolated and replaced. This implies an assumption that the sum of the parts equals the whole. Is this assumption always valid for living organisms?

Take the soil from whence comes our food. One teaspoon of healthy soil contains 720,500 living organisms composed of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and micro-arthropods in an interrelated web of life. Scientists have only succeeded in isolating and studying the function of about 5 percent of these organisms because the little ones don’t continue to function outside of that web.

Nevertheless, our reductive science has determined that the soil web will be maintained and crops will be adequately nourished by applying just three elements: N (nitrogen), P (phosphorus) and K (potassium) that are the ingredients of fossil fuel derived artificial fertilizer. Before industrial agriculture, and now only on organic farms under whole systems thinking, a circular flow of nutrients is maintained for fertility using composted manure and organic materials, plow-down crops (known as green manure) and diverse crop rotations that support the soil organisms.

Another example of the fruits of reductionism: Wonder Bread made from refined, white flour. It is still on the grocery shelves, just under different names. The refining process of foods with carbohydrates (starch and sugar) strips them of their vitamin and mineral components, also their enzymes, protein, fat and fiber. But those are the body-building and digestion-regulating factors which are needed for proper digestion and absorption.

Plants are a symphony of hundreds of compounds acting together in a harmonious whole and that is what our bodies have evolved with. When refined flour and sugar are consumed, the body will pull the nutrients for digestion from elsewhere in the body — often the bones and teeth. That is the cause of many ailments, including tooth decay, not some bacteria on the teeth. Solution? The food industry offers “fortified” breads with synthetic vitamins. Might a whole food be more than the sum of the few parts that science is able to isolate and name?

Another problem that arises with reductionist thinking is that it leads us into trying to solve problems with the same approach that created them. For instance, in 2006 we had an episode of E. coli bacteria on spinach that killed three people and sickened 200. Rather than dealing with the problems inherent in a disease-ridden factory-farm food system, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will allow the irradiation of iceberg lettuce and spinach. And it will not be labeled as such with words although it should have a “radura” symbol somewhere on the item.

Some processed meats and hamburger are irradiated and should also show the symbol. The symbol looks more like it is indicating freshness than irradiation. The FDA, of course, insists that this will have no effect on the nutritional value of the food. After all, when we view food as an assemblage of certain invisible nutrients then we need the experts to tell us what to eat. It also gives them license to tinker with the very building blocks of life — DNA. More on that later.

Food is not a collection of isolated nutrients. Food is part of a chain and is linked to the health of the soil, to the health of the plants and animals, to the health of the farm, to the health of the eaters, to the health of the community and the culture of the people.

Whole systems thinking recognizes that life is complex. Complexity is so much more difficult to understand. We all like simple answers. We want a one-nutrient explanation, or a one-pill solution to a health problem. It’s a slippery slope that we are on and it is going to take some willpower to climb out of it. And guess what, from a whole systems point of view, we will only be able to muster that willpower if we are actually eating whole foods! §