Hi Raimo,
My own understanding of integral (I’m just an average person, I don’t work in any therapy or growth area), is that for me, integral theory has opened up my cognition to many more possibilities. Opening up my mind to be more flexible, has allowed me to listen better to a wider variety of ideas, experts, knowledge, etc. More “full” even at my own level, in a sense.
The other aspect of integral theory for me is that the theory is a “summary”. If I want an integrally informed garden, I still need to find a gardener who has good knowledge of gardening! And they might know nothing about integral, but I can recognise that they’re good at gardening and what I bring is maybe just my own values, e.g., I’d like it to be more wildlife friendly.
Anyway, I say that just because the advice on nutrition can come from anywhere outside the integral community. I started looking for answers to diet about 20 years ago. And one of the first things that struck me was there there was a mainstream accepted view about diet, and I believed it at the time.
So then I basically went on a journey. I was in a bookshop one day and looked at a book title which said, “The Great Cholesterol Con”, and I was surprised, I thought, that’s weird, we all know cholesterol is very very bad for us, how can there be a book questioning that?? And for a moment I was rationally curious, and was about to pick up the book, but then I was overpowered by a feeling, “no! If I read this then I am giving in to quackery!!” so I ignored the book.
Then maybe a year later, I was sitting in the audience at an open medical conference (there were about 100 doctors in the audience and about 100 members of the public), and I was struck by the intelligent and well evidenced talk which a doctor was giving, and I wondered why his name sounded familiar, and I realised, “oh! this is the person who wrote that book which I judged to be quackery!!”
It was strange for me because I had to reflect, why was I so convinced that the book must be quackery, when I saw it in the bookshop?? I had never consciously studied the topic, nor read articles, or anything—yet I had an overpowering belief, so where did that come from??
Twenty years later, having now watched hundreds of presentations on diet, and read a dozen books, and most importantly, having tried different ways of eating, I think it is basically the fault of global corporations which pay public relations companies, and pay key people in the world of science, people who can influence certain committees and decisions, to set official policy on what is “healthy”.
There’s an interesting reason why public health policy and advice on nutrition is easy to corrupt. It’s that it is very difficult and expensive to run a rigorous scientific study to establish what is a healthy diet. If a person eats more of one food, they are therefore eating less of another food. So there’s many confounding variables. And even if you design a strict experiment, how do you get people to stick to one diet their whole lives, so as to measure the outcome? You can’t put people in a cage and feed them a specific diet and control all the variables.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the long reply, I just wanted to express that for me, what is a good diet, what are good supplements, has been a difficult question for 20 years. In my own journey I have come to what I do now, which I find works for me, and makes me feel so much better (I’m in my 50s).
A key insight for me is that, I can only really know by trying it for myself, and seeing if there’s big results. And also continuously keep an open mind because scientifically, it’s a very difficult question and very difficult to prove.
Doctors have to follow what is common practice or they fear they will get sued (this I learn from overhearing doctors talking), so they won’t tell their patients a diet that they know could be very beneficial, because quite literally, an NGO related to a big processed food manufacturer, will complain about them to the medical council and target them for firing. It sounds wild but there’s enough people out there explaining exactly that this has happened. People who have spent years tracing the history of scientific research in nutrition, have noted that before WWII, all the top experts were in Europe, then after the war, the field was started again from scratch in USA, but funded by processed food manufacturers, and the field was distorted from then on.
All I can say is, one has to try for oneself to find what works, with an open mind.
Another insight, is that the body regenerates about every 7 years, which means it can tolerate the effects of a bad diet for a long time, and people can believe they are doing great on their new diet, but they’re actually just using up their body’s reserves. Towards the end of the 7 years, deficiencies will start to show up, as the body hasn’t been able to rebuild itself, lacking the right materials. When enough related systems break, even the body’s amazing ability to recover health, becomes too broken.
Another insight for me, it has to be about love. Accepting the body, accepting corporeal existence, appreciating our connection with nature. All these are part of the will to be healthy.
I also have enjoyed seeing that, the mind and brain, really are linked to the body. I used to have a persistent mild depression, I always felt like something what wrong, and to my surprise, it vanished when I changed how I eat. Likewise, good sleep is foundational.
I can suggest these links and resources.
Lierre Keith is a writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist.
Her book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.”
https://lierrekeith.com
Gary Taubes — Author of Rethinking Diabetes, The Case Against Sugar, Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories
https://garytaubes.com
Dr. Shawn Baker — Surgeon, Author, Athlete, Father
https://www.youtube.com/@ShawnBakerMD
https://carnivore.diet
Dr. Georgia Ede — Harvard-trained, board-certified psychiatrist specializing in nutritional and metabolic psychiatry. My passion is empowering people with psychiatric conditions to reduce or eliminate the need for medications by changing how they eat. But which changes are worth making, and why? Answering that question is what my work is all about.
https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/
Public Health Collaboration UK — We are a UK registered charity dedicated to improving public health and saving the NHS money at the same time through sustainable lifestyle changes.
https://phcuk.org
These might not seem spiritual, but I recall in a talk, Ken Wilber saying that growth was like starting out with one hundred dollars, and at each stage, if something goes wrong, then you lose some dollars, and when you run out of dollars, growth then stops. Diet and the body are foundational.