Food quality is an important issue for our modern world. There is an increasing awareness that empty calories and mass-produced food don't offer the quality nutrition that people need, and that smaller amounts of better-quality food could help combat the epidemic of obesity sweeping the western world.

Karl König recognised the significance of human nutrition nearly one hundred years ago. In the 1920s he started lecturing on the subject as part of a programme of social help in deprived city areas, and in 1936 gave a course for physicians and educators.

This book contains two essays and sixteen lectures ranging from the significance of nutrition in early childhood and during illness, and descriptions of the digestive process and the inner organs from a spiritual point of view, to his ideas about the future development of nourishment. König's work is introduced by three contemporary researchers into nutritional practice, and finishes with König's appreciation of the only mealtime grace given by Rudolf Steiner.

'Much has changed -- for both better and worse -- since König gave these lectures, but the importance of two streams of nutrition and of our relationship with the cosmos has not … There is much in these lectures that is thought-provoking'
-- Paul Carline, New View

'Karl König would have certainly embraced and carried forward these scientific findings […] This book will be apprecited by many sympathetic readers who want to deepen their grasp on the past elements that have informed the growth and development of the Camphill Movement.'
--Simon Hanks, New View

Karl König (1902-66) was well-known as a physician, author and lecturer. He began his work at the Institute of Embryology at the University of Vienna. In 1940 he founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. Based on Rudolf Steiner's insights into human development, the special education schools for children and villages for adults with special needs are now established in many parts of the world.