Food Thing

You know the story: You're concerned about the chemicals and pesticides and preservatives and pollution in your food and you'd like to do something about it. Maybe even switch to a completely organic diet . . . or something. But there's so many sickly looking nuts pushing pet theories over there in the "health" camp that you're not too sure about that either.

What you'd like to see is kind of a good, sensible, middle-of-the-road approach to health foods - one that both worked and tasted good, right?

Well, Mick and Lini - who write ECOLOGICAL COOKERY for the L.A. FREE PRESS - may have that theory. Although I take mild exception to a couple of their blanket statements I think - in the main-they've done one of the better jobs of linking the daily ration to an overriding ecological viewpoint. See what you think as you read Mick and Lini's . . . "Food Thing".

Today, every American - from the President to our greyhaired grandmother - knows the meaning of the word ecology. The national media are filled with glaring, glossy feature articles on the subject. Invariably these articles all read the same and the advice they offer is predictable: unless America changes its basic approach to Nature there are grim times in store for us all. Suggestions are offered, commissions appointed to study the matter, laws passed, law suits filed but . . . interestingly enough . . . nothing really changes.

There is a very good reason for this. So far, all approaches to the problem of Man's ecological relationship to the earth have followed the traditional pattern of Western science: The microscopic classification of objects and events into tiny categories and the inability to form a conception of something without tearing it to pieces. It is precisely this type of thinking that has produced the ecological problems in the first place, and only a re-examination of our most basic approaches to Nature can rectify the crisis that confronts us today.

The ecologists are - for the most part - sincere, dedicated and genuinely concerned with the biological disaster that faces Mankind. Yet they have somehow overlooked the most basic facts and have been unable to find the source of the problems that confront us. They have not realized that the environment, in the fullest sense of the word, begins inside the human body and reaches to infinity. Before we can begin to deal effectively with the problems of the world around us we must go to the source of the problem . . . ourselves. The only way to change the world is to change ourselves first.

Everything, including ecology and pollution, begins and ends within us. Everything we love and despise - including pollution and the proclivity for destruction - has its origin in our hearts. Air pollution is not an isolated phenomenon that has been done to us by industry. The blame for the destruction of our nation's health and natural resources rests - at least in part - with every individual.