Fresh leaves, while they last

Carrot top pesto with roasted baby carrots and a quiche bought at Trader Joe’s

I am strongly of the view that what keeps us alive is negative entropy. When I bring this up with people who I think might be interested, their eyes glaze over with boredom, and I drop the subject. Entropy = disorder. Negative entropy = order. Life goes on only because life magically resists the natural tendency toward decay and disorder.

Obviously we eat to obtain energy. And obviously we eat to obtain certain nutrients. If we ate no calcium, for example, we would have no bones. We could eat compost and get calcium and calories. But that’s not enough. We would not be able to thrive on compost. We’d develop all sorts of diseases and then die. Why? Because all the order, all the life, is gone from compost. Once bacteria have squeezed the last bit of order out of compost (the bacteria then die and become part of the compost), only plants can use the compost then. Plants can use the compost because they use photosynthesis to create new order, in the form of complex organic molecules, out of the dead raw material.

I have written in more detail about this here. It boils down to a theory of nutrition based on physics rather than on biology. A theory from physics does not in any way negate a theory from biology. Rather, physics just takes us back one level to a more fundamental science of life.

What does this have to do with fresh leaves? It is photosynthesis, using energy from the sun, that is the basis of life on earth. Life has the ability to take dead elements (such as calcium, nitrogen, iron, magnesium, and water) and build the vast variety of complex molecules that are necessary for life. Those dead elements, as in compost, are simple and lifeless. The order, as in the products of plant life, is exceedingly complex — alive. It is photosynthesis that gave them life and order. Chlorophyll is a rich source of order. And chlorophyll is only one of the countless orderly molecules that plants produce and that we need to thrive and to avoid disease.

This, I think, is why people do not thrive on ultraprocessed foods. Ultraprocessed foods are like compost. The energy is there, some of the simple nutrients are there, but the order has been processed out and is mostly gone. Bodies live on, because they’re getting energy (too much of it, really), but the body breaks down, because it’s starved for order. It’s just a hunch, and I can’t offer any evidence. But I suspect that the reason we sometimes eat too much is that our bodies are starved for order, even though we’re overfed on low-order foods.

So then, carrot tops. If you can get your hands on some living leaves fresh out of the sun, eat them! They are a magnificently rich source of order.

My farmer friends Brittany and Richard grew the carrots and harvested them the morning before I made the pesto.

Carrot leaves — fresh chlorophyll!