Our plunge into technology and our consumer lifestyle has upset the balance of Earth’s biosphere. We transform Earth’s resources into trash and pollution at a faster and faster pace. Emerging from ecosystem breakdown are super bacteria, viruses, chemical toxins, global warming and climate change that threaten our own health

More people are becoming aware that diseases like cancer are directly related to environmental factors. A growing portion of Earth’s population is seeking super health to protect against this pollution, boost their immune system, resist disease and retard the aging process.

All this arrives synchronistically at the beginning of a new millennium, when we sense a new age approaching: an age of networks, an age of community, or even an age of light.

How can we prepare ourselves and make choices that restore our personal health, the health of our society and the entire planet?

1. Does our food restore our personal health?
Many foods we eat are toxic to long term health. They lead to cancer, heart and degenerative disease, immune breakdown and chronic lethargy. The introduction of genetically modified organisms into the food system adds unknown health risks. Two-thirds of all deaths in the USA are attributed to diet.

2. Does our food restore our human species?
Much of the global food production and distribution system creates hunger in a world of abundance. Two-thirds of humanity live in poverty and scarcity. Over 40,000 children die of malnutrition and related diseases every day.

3. Does our food restore our planetary ecosystem and its remarkable biodiversity?
About three-quarters of all fertile land in the temperate and tropic zones is devoted to agriculture. Our world economy depletes fertile soil, wastes fresh water, pollutes the environment, kills other living species, turns rainforest into desert, cropland into wasteland. The unsustainable way we produce our food may represent the greatest threat to the health of our biosphere.

This inefficient expropriation of resources increases scarcity, poverty and suffering for two-thirds of the world's people. Agribusiness desertifies the planet, eliminates biodiversity, pushes global warming and steals resources from future generations.

Environmental stress accelerates the breakdown of Earth's ecosystems. These systems cannot adjust as quickly to the changes humans have recently introduced. Great bodies of water are dying from pollution. Forests around the world are dying as if they were suffering from some immune system collapse.

Neither can human bodies quickly adjust to these rapid changes. Increased ultraviolet radiation from the depletion of the ozone layer causes skin cancer, cataracts and suppression of our immune system. Simultaneously, immune system diseases like AIDS have appeared.

Antibiotics are no longer effective against new resistant bacteria. "The End of Antibiotics" (Newsweek March 28, 1994) claimed "the rise of drug resistant germs is unparalleled in recorded biologic history." Over prescription of antibiotics in the last 40 years has accelerated the mutation of resistant bacteria. People taking medications and antibiotics are more vulnerable. Antibiotics kill beneficial flora in the intestines, making room for infection by drug resistant bacteria.

Much more infectious mutant retro viruses than AIDS are coming. "The Danger Zone" (May 4, 1994) broadcast by CBS 48 Hours and new books like "The Coming Plague - newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance" warn about these deadly viruses. The sensational movie Outbreak (1995) used a mutant airborne ebola virus to scare us. Hantavirus carried by rats and new viruses emerging from the tropical rainforests are examples of infectious airborne viruses.

Although this situation seems pretty grim, there is good news. A remarkable paradigm shift is already underway.

In animal nutrition, as antibiotics are becoming ineffective, scientists are replacing them with probiotics, special therapeutic foods that boost the immune system and resistance to disease. In human medical research, scientists are rushing to identify probiotic foods that enhance our immune system. Researchers are scouring the globe for diverse new foods and plants for cancer preventing compounds. The goal of the National Cancer Institute Experimental Food Program is to study, assess and develop experimental, or designer foods, rich in disease and cancer preventing substances.

There's a revolution in health: We've been hearing about antioxidants, nutraceuticals, and designer foods loaded with functional nutrients: the leading edge of nutritional research in the 1990s. Another Newsweek story (April 25, 1994) proclaimed: "Better than Vitamins: can phytochemicals prevent cancer?" The article extolled remarkable compounds in whole foods that can prevent disease, even better than isolated vitamins and nutrients.

Probiotics, nutraceuticals, phytochemicals, designer foods - where do we start? With the original food designed by nature - spirulina! To raise your energetic frequency, bring this light food into your life.

The first photosynthetic lifeform was designed by nature 3.6 billion years ago. Blue-green algae, cyanobacteria, is the evolutionary bridge between bacteria and green plants. It contained within it everything life needed to evolve. This immortal plant has renewed itself for billions of years, and has presented itself to us in the last 20 years. Spirulina has 3.6 billion years of evolutionary wisdom coded in its DNA.

Does spirulina contain antioxidants? Yes. Is it a probiotic food? You bet! Is it a nutraceutical? That too. Is it loaded with phytochemicals? All kinds. It contains compounds like phycocyanin, polysaccharides, and sulfolipids that enhance the immune system. This superfood has the most remarkable concentration of functional nutrients ever known in any food, plant, grain or herb.

On top of this, spirulina delivers more nutrition per acre than any other food on the planet. This has extraordinary implications for more efficient and less damaging food production for the future.

Each day new research brings to light the wonders (hidden) in microscopic algae. In 1989, the National Cancer Institute announced sulfolipids extracted from blue-green algae were 'remarkably active' against the AIDS virus in test tube experiments. Sulfolipids can prevent viruses from either attaching to or penetrating into cells, thus preventing viral infection.

Research published from 1991-99 has shown phycocyanin and polysaccharide extracts of spirulina increase macrophage production, bone marrow reproduction, strengthen the immune system and disease resistance in fish, mice, chickens, cats and human cells.

Algae is in its infancy as a food, medicine and biochemical resource. Spirulina, a descendant of Earth's first photosynthetic life form, was rediscovered about 35 years ago. Just 20 years ago, it burst into public awareness as a powerful new food with a promise as a food source to help feed the world's people.

This magnificent idea caught our imagination. Compared to the five billion years of Earth history, or to the millions of years of humanity, or to the thousands of years of human food development, 20 years is only an instant in time.

Cultivation of grains and development of irrigation took thousands of years. Soybeans, a newcomer, took 50 years to emerge from obscurity. The last 20 years progress in algae technology is astounding.

The first chapter (1) looks at the role of algae in history and the implications from its productivity. How can spirulina transform your personal health? (2) Its nutritional attributes are described and compared with other foods. (3) A review of personal self care programs shows how to use and benefit from this superfood. (4) The extensive clinical research suggests spirulina is a probiotic and therapeutic food.

What is the role of spirulina in global economics and politics? (5) The variety of products around the world is probably more than you realize. (6) Ecological technology is used to cultivate spirulina, and future growing systems will produce exciting new products. (7) A critical look shows the resource advantages of spirulina production.

How can spirulina help restore our planet? (8) Farms large and small are blossoming in the developing world. (9) Looking to the future, spirulina and other algae are featured in projects to restore and regreen the face of our planet.

Just as our body is composed of billions of cells working together as a single being, billions of lifeforms on Earth are working together as one living organism. By adopting ecological food choices for restoring our own health, we help restore humanity and our planet.

Algae harvests sunlight. It transforms light to living matter more efficiently than other plants. Eat the light in spirulina and bring light into your own cells. Eat lighter, eat less. Raise your energy level to embrace the pace of change in this age of transformation. Consume less, live lighter on the Earth. Participate in the unfolding story of earth consciousness rising.

They represent some of the many solutions for restoring our planet in the next 20 years. Perhaps for this reason algae have arrived in our consciousness.