We are carbon-based life forms, living on a carbon-based planet, eating carbon to nourish ourselves. Carbon thou art to carbon returnest.

The fact that Hawken nonchalantly inserts a couple of lines about the inhuman horrors Columbus committed on the Taino people caused me gut-wrenching despair. It absolutely blows my mind how the God of Catholicism and the Devil were practically indistinguishable back then (and in many cases holds true even today).

According to Hawken, practically every vegetable and fruit that we eat was originally cultivated by Indigenous farmers in the Americas.

Apparently, all living beings have different bodies, different constitutions and different nutritional needs at different times. He cites a 1928 study by pediatrician Clara Davies where several infants were offered various types of foods and they all seemed to eat what they needed, and developed into “the finest group of specimens” according to the children’s attending pediatrician.

Unfortunately, our taste buds were bio-hacked a few decades ago by “food” manufacturers and “sensory” alchemists and we have become “culinary hamsters in the treadmill of supermarket foods.”

We started out being predators, but we have turned into prey for the food industry, which degrades not only our health, but also the land, water and animal health.

Several details about our taste and smell senses. Lots of numbers of taste combinations, nutritional components, different biochemicals, phytonutrients etc.

Although I don’t consume a lot of kale, I like it, so I was a bit disappointed to hear Hawken call kale a fad that’s not good for us – apparently, market kale has high amounts of heavy metals and raw kale contains goitrogens that suppress thyroid function.

The chapter ends by saying that our health and the land we live on are intimately connected, and to restore both, we have to take back our mouths and taste buds from those who use it to accumulate financial capital and return them to those who create biological capital.