Questions Regarding Nutrition in the Light of Spiritual Science

It seems strange to some when Spiritual Science speaks about what many rightly consider to be the most material, the least spiritual of all things: nutrition. There are people who want to indicate their particular idealism, indeed their particular spirituality, by saying: Oh, we only concern ourselves with what is sublime, above the questions connected with material life. Such people then also believe—and in a certain sense they may be right—that, fundamentally, it is irrelevant to the development of the ideal and the spiritual how people satisfy their physical needs. The materialistic way of thinking judges differently. A great philosopher of the nineteenth century made a statement that has been repeated many times and that causes shudders and horror in many people who are spiritually idealistic, the statement made by Feuerbach: “Man is what he eats.” Most people understand this to mean — and the materialistic mind will certainly agree — that man is a sum of the substances he feeds his body, and that this not only determines the interplay of his organic life, but also what presents itself in his spirit.