# Healthiness

**By Stewart Lundy** · 2023-04-05

As those who cook may know, the _quality_ of the heat matters. If you're grilling over an open fire, it has one effect. If you bake in an oven, quite another effect. If you microwave, yet another. What changes here is the _quality_ of the heat the cook is using. This is one of the most important things in biodynamics: the _quality_ of our inputs.   
  
If we wish to have _healthy_ plants, we should consider using healthy _inputs_. But that means reaching beyond soluble fertilizers which, let's face it, are not alive enough to be "healthy." Now, a particular chemical may be healthy or unhealthy _for_ a living organism, but if we wish to foster healthy plants, we need to add _heathliness_ back to the soil.   
  
That means that we need compost that has no odor. It means we need to bring _healthiness_ from specific medicinal herbs to our compost pile because those herbs are known to bolster health. It's almost as if the compost pile itself is a living thing full of invisible inner activities that can be healthy or unhealthy. The [biodynamic compost preparations](https://jpibiodynamics.org/products/set-of-biodynamic-compost-preparations-bd-502-507) do just that: they encourage _healthiness_ in compost, and help make your crops into healthier plants.

**Tags:** 2023, alchemy, anthroposophy, bda, biodynamic, biodynamic preparations, clay, compost, compost activator, conversion, DIY, earth, etheric, goethe, goethean observation, homestead, Horn Manure, IMOs, indigenous, indigenous microorganisms, intuition

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> Source: [The Josephine Porter Institute](https://www.jpibiodynamics.org/blogs/blog/healthy-cooking-inputs)