Spirit-Centered Eating, Part 2: The Spirit of Our Food

What about the spirit of what we eat? 

When we kill other living beings in order to eat them, their spirits leave at different speeds. For example, an apple doesn't die as soon as we pick it. Its spirit leaves gradually over time. However, the spirit of a freshly killed chicken leaves quickly.

How spirited are the seeds, roots, stems, leaves, vegetables and fruits we eat? How spirited are the fish, birds, and other animals we eat? Generally speaking, fresh, local, in-season, organic, whole foods are the most spirited. The sooner we preserve the plants animals we kill, the more spirit they retain. However, the more processed plants and animals are, the less spirit they retain. 

Try this: eat a meal of fresh, local, in-season vegetables and eat a meal of the same vegetables from a grocery store's canned vegetables aisle. See if you sense a difference in the spiritedness of the two meals. An even easier test is comparing fresh, free-range, organic chicken eggs with cheaper caged, chemically-treated chicken eggs. Can you sense the difference?