Nutrition and Emotional Well-Being
In ancient Greece, Aphrodite was the goddess of Love and Beauty. In Greek, the anagram of the word "Afroditi" gives us the word "Diatrofi", which means "nutrition". The Ancient Greeks tell us that if we wish to have energy flowing in our bodies and in our lives, and to have mental and spiritual balance, nutrition is a vital prerequisite.
Pythagoras was mankind's first nutritionist after Asclepius. He taught that "the soul is the harmony of the body. It belongs to the body in the same way that the sounds of a musical instrument belong to instrument that produces them, and it needs proper nourishment". He discouraged his students from eating animal flesh and from drinking wine. He studied the subject of food and digestion extensively. He also discouraged his students from eating legumes because he considered them difficult to digest. He believed in the value of raw foods such as vegetables, fruit, milk, honey, sprouted wheat, nuts and raisins.
Today we know that these foods contain all the necessary enzymes, vitamins and trace elements that the organism requires to have mental, bodily and emotional health.
The Orphics, the Personalist philosophers and Pythagoras excluded meat and fish from their diet, even though in those days the fish were not full of heavy metals and the meat was not full of hormones. Pythagoras maintained that flesh-eating is one of the root causes of belligerence. This has been confirmed by experiments on animals.
Ann Wigmore, the founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute describes the following case:
One of her colleagues, John McDonald, was breeding a colony of mice. For six months the mice were fed only grains. The colony was peaceful. Then he started feeding the mice with the leftovers from a nearby restaurant. After 20 days they were shocked to discover evidence of cannibalism. Mothers would eat their young, and the more aggressive males would attack weaker mice without provocation. They changed the diet of the mice to grains again, and after a while peace was restored in the colony.
Galen believed that meat increases the melancholic humor in the body. So, not only does it affect the body with its toxins, but it also affects the soul.
Dr. Bernard Jensen, known as the Father of Holistic Health, said that the day will come when we realize that we are nourished by the electromagnetic energy of the food and not by its material substance. Kirlian photograms record the energy emitted by seeds, a fact that proves that they have energy.
Foods carry vibrations that are added to our own. When an animal is being slaughtered, the hormones of fear (adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisone) course through its body and fill its flesh. When we eat its meat, in effect we feed ourselves with the panic of the slaughtered animal.