REAL FOOD IS UNREFINED, UNPROCESSED...

What's For Dinner?

Food problems for many people today, and for most people who lived before us, are more about getting enough to eat than about what to eat. But those who have access to, and can afford, any food any time of the year, have become almost obsessed with discerning the right choices from the many types of nourishment offered by the Fourth River of Healing. In fact, advice on what to eat and how to exercise are multi-billion dollar industries in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The Wise Woman Tradition has no rules, so we are free to eat whatever we wish. But too much freedom can be frightening. To narrow my choices, I looked at historical food choices worldwide, reviewed scientific analyses of nutrients in foods, and kept a firm focus on health as wholeness.

The best diet, I decided, is one that contains as much nourishment and as many choices as possible that are sacred, whole, abundant, seasonal, fresh, accessible, local, varied, wild, and storied.

Abundance includes consuming abundantly, and consuming that which is abundant. We increase health when we breathe abundantly, when we drink an abundance of water, when we enjoy an abundance of loving support, when we eat what is abundant in our environment, and when we ingest the wholeness of the world in each moment.

When we consume that which is abundant, rather than that which is scarce, we satisfy ourselves without guilt, blame, or shame, increasing our health even more.

Abundance gives rise to generosity. Abundance creates safety, security, and ease. We crave abundance, so we contrive it. We process and refine foods, add fake flavors, false colors, and preservatives. Is it any wonder that such food, eaten in abundance, creates disease/distress/death? Real food is unrefined, unprocessed, unbleached, unpreserved, unenriched, and when eaten in abundance creates health/wholeness/holiness.

Seasonal nourishment is in synch with the rhythms of the Earth. It helps us change with the seasons. Since out of season produce is often more heavily sprayed, choosing food that is seasonal protects our health by reducing the chemicals we consume. And it protects the health of the Earth because it reduces the amount of fuel required to transport and keep the food.

“ Ninety-eight percent of [tomatoes] sold in January, February, and March are from Mexico. . . . they are picked green, gassed to turn them red, transported in refrigerated trucks, and kept in refrigerated distribution centers.”
Vince Staten (1993)

Fresh is just picked, tender, intimate, and vital. Fresh is ripe, tasty, and nutritious. Fresh is full of nuances and subtleties. Fresh is bubbling with life force. In the Fourth River we breathe fresh air, drink fresh water, have fresh experiences, entertain fresh thoughts, and eat fresh food .

Fresh is in the moment: flours ground fresh, nuts freshly roasted, oils freshly pressed, vegetables and fruits harvested ripe, fish just caught.

Fresh is not raw. Cooked foods, fermented foods, dehydrated foods, even frozen and canned foods are fresh. (Because fresh produce rots on the way to market, it is picked green and may not develop its full array of nutrients. Produce grown for commercial canning or freezing however is allowed to ripen fully and picked at its peak of flavor, nutrition, and freshness.)

Accessible is free. That which is most nourishing to the health/wholeness/holiness of all is usually easy to get, free to everyone, and easily accessible. Scarcity, expense, and remoteness appeal to us, intrigue us. We are more curious about the rare thing than the common thing.

Strengthening and feeding ourselves with what is accessible from nature is easy, free, unhindered. Available, reachable, understandable. The glass become s half full. Weeds are powerhouses of nutrition, not enemies to be destroyed. Problems are allies of wholeness.



Local refers to a locus, a place. When we strengthen and feed ourselves from what is accessible it is usually local. When we locate ourselves within a family, the Fourth River brings us stories, photos, mementoes, sap rising up from ancestral roots. When we locate ourselves at a place on the Earth, even if only for a short while, the Fourth River brings us health in local weeds, legends, sacred spots. When we locate ourselves within ourselves, the Fourth River brings us home to ourselves.

Variety is more than the spice of life. Life is variety. We are stronger and more nourished when we use a variety of exercises and foods. Confining ourselves to narrow choices or limiting our diet by avoiding any whole food almost a lways leads us to malnourish ourselves. While there is not much harm in following a restricted diet for a few weeks or months, eating by severe dietary rules of any kind erodes health/wholeness/holiness.

We are omnivores, willing and able to eat an enormous variety of foods. Our early ancestors ate about 2000 different foods. Dr. Weston Price traveled the world observing native diets; he found that those who ate the most varied diets lived longest and had the fewest degenerative diseases. The Hopi cultivate hundreds of kinds of corn, while most twenty first century Americans eat only one hundred different foods.

Add variety by eating seaweed: try arame, hijiki, kombu, wakame, sea palm fronds, dulse, nori. Add variety by eating more beans: try black lentils, orange lentils, anasazi beans, split peas, pinto beans, lima beans. Add variety by eating whole grains: try brown rice, kasha, millet, quinoa, teff. Add variety by eating wild berries and wild greens: try dandelion leaves, chickweed or miner's lettuce, wild onions, mallow and violet leaves. Home gardens, ordinary vacant lots, even the pots of houseplants, offer us an enormous variety of edible weeds.

Wild food is our original food. Uncultivated, it is nature's gift to us. The nutrients in wild foods trigger cellular memories of health/wholeness/holiness. Even a bite of wild food (on a daily basis) has a profound effect on wellbeing and health. Wild foods are holographic and complex; they resonant in the whole body, reconnecting us to health and flexibility. Wild foods grow where and when they wish. Eating them opens our senses and nourishes the part of each one of us that is wild.

The nutrients in wild foods are more biologically active at the cellular receptors than the nutrients in cultivated food (yes, even organic foods). We’ve been co-evolving with wild plants for hundreds of thousands of years. Our cells, our bodies, our spirits, know how to u se the strength and nourishment found in wild foods to create optimum health for us.


Green Blessings, Susun Weed