Food for Thought

I was killing time at Whole Foods in Manhattan a few months ago when I picked up this heavyweight tome, Conscious Eating, the so-called "Bible of Vegetarians." Alternating between wonderment and abject fear, I shuddered at the depth of Dr. Gabriel Cousens's erudition and the damage done eating supermarket meats and produce lo these many years. A tidbit: Cousens recounts talking to a poultry industry union official who said privately he "would never eat chicken knowing what he has seen." KFC, anyone?

We are talking 800-plus pages of mind-altering information, raw food recipes, healing properties of foods -- and by an author who is not only an actual M.D., but a psychiatrist, family therapist and licensed homeopathic physician to boot. Deepak Chopra you can have -- he is a media stooge and used chakra salesman compared to Cousens. Within a week of reading this book, I started a daily juicing regimen, lost 17 pounds and started earnestly thinking about the physical and spiritual dimensions of what I ingest day to day. I am far from perfect, but you won't see me in line at Burger King anytime soon.

There are new age echoes in GC's stentorian voice, but I have never been put off less by such touchy-feeliness, given its roots in solid empirical research on human nutrition. "A nutrient," the Doc says, "is what we absorb into our overall body-mind-spirit from the different density levels that have precipitated from the cosmic force." All that high-mindedness and recipes for "live" catsup and mustard, among many other treasures. This could be a life-saving thirty-five buck investment. The publisher, North Atlantic Books, has many other titles worth a gander as well -- including Cousens's There is a Cure for Diabetes.