The SNJ’s new columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

Reductionism – six blind men trying to identify the elephant.

A friend in Stroud recommended a book. I bought it. I’m reading it. I’m turning inside-out over it. Bless her.

Whole: Rethinking The Science of Nutrition (and so much else) by hugely accredited and qualified T Colin Campbell is one of the most enlightening and stimulating books I’ve ever glued my mind to.

It’s not just about what you eat and how it affects you. It reaches out to a wide range of interconnected phenomena, including results of medical studies, observations, explanations, the limits of paradigms, parts and wholes and how they integrate, ecolibrium, and includes great quotes at the start of every chapter such as Maslov’s “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

And “Don’t be afraid to take a big step; you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” (That’s David Lloyd George.) I’ve taken a big step and I’m no longer just a vegetarian, I’ve evolved to become a vegan. Dairy products, milk? The casein (protein) in milk has carcinogenic properties. I wouldn’t touch it with a single molecule of my inner self.

Campbell explains that “noticing that chimps and gorillas have strong bones and muscles while eating whole food, plant-based diets (WFPB) undercuts the notion that humans need animal protein to grow and maintain muscle mass. We can point to the largest land animals, elephants and hippos, whose 100 percent plant-based diets don’t render them weak or scrawny.”

How we eat is who we are, and if we chomp down plant based whole foods and avoid meat and animal proteins, we can have high hopes of remaining free of disease and living long enough to not be able to notice a hedgehog pottering down the lane.

In my view, the book’s biggest asset lies in explaining the meaning of reductionism – a process of mental and literal filtering that becomes problematic when we think we’re seeing the whole of reality, but are actually only aware of parts: reductionism versus wholism.

As Campbell says, like looking at things only a through a microscope instead of both microscope and telescope.

He makes clear that: “You can’t study wholistic phenomena solely through reductionist modes of inquiry without sacrificing reality and truth in the process.”

Nutrition is firmly rooted in the reductionist paradigm, as is virtually everything in society: politics, medicine, science, education, business, etc.

“Nutrition is a wholistic order that can never be fully comprehended within a reductionist framework. . .

“Reductionist design leads to reductionist answers and excludes the true nature of biological complexity,” he writes.

At the moment I’m only on page 115 and can’t wait for my next sit-down.

Reading and embracing this book puts me on a different planet. It lifts me, and could lift all readers to a glorious realm high above the curtailed and non-expansive reductionist thinking that binds us to the commonplace, non-curious, unimaginative limitations we unwittingly impose on our selves, our species.

I want to fly free, see life through a 360 degree glow of awareness, and wholly connect with what’s real.