Food Is Medicine

It is impossible to engage in living a healthy lifestyle if the majority of our food is adulterated. After all, nutrition through whole food sources is the cornerstone of any health regimen.

"Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food"- Hippocrates, Father of Modern Medicine (460 - 370 BC.)

Another quote attributed to Hippocrates is "First, do not harm." This is a part of the Hippocratic oath still recited by prospective doctors to this day.

Truth be told, this is where the similarity ends between medical practice today and that in Hippocrates' time (about 2500 years ago.) Today, the medical profession's practice is Let prescription drugs be thy medicine. The pharmaceutical industry is well on its way - if it hasn't already reached it - to having "a pill for every ill."

Did you know that less than 6 percent of graduating doctors receive any nutritional training?

Only 30 to 40 percent of medical schools offer a required nutrition course according to various surveys. Based on a report published in 1999, Dr. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, stated that the educational material provided to those schools which offer a nutrition course is provided by: The Dannon Institute, Egg Nutrition Board, Cattleman's Beef Association, National Dairy Council, Nestle Clinical Nutrition, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, and Baxter Healthcare Corporation!

Can someone say "conflict of interest"?

The obstacle to food serving as medicine in America today - and in other industrialized countries - is that much of it is calorically-dense, nutritionally-sparse, severely processed, and completely lifeless.

It is a commonly accepted fact that America's soil is not as nutrient-rich as it was several decades ago. Amazingly, a similar situation existed in 1936. Senate Document 264 of the 74th Congress, 2nd Session 1936, was published in the March, 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It read in part:

"Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, vegetables, grains, eggs and even the milk and meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago. No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the mineral salts he requires for perfect health ..." (Source: DailyPaul.com.)

How much worse is American soil today? Modern mainstream farming practice is the culprit for severe soil depletion.

Agricultural methods include using massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides on crops and soil. This results in the stripping away of vital minerals and vitamins from the soil. And all of the applied "-cides" adds toxicity to the crops.

The Kushi Institute analyzed nutrients in 12 fresh vegetables from data gathered from 1975 to 1997. Average calcium levels dropped 27 percent; iron levels dropped 37 percent; vitamin A levels dropped 21 percent; vitamin C levels dropped 30 percent.

The average mineral content of vegetables such as cabbage and spinach has dropped over 80 percent over the last 50 years!

You would need to eat 26 apples in order to get the equivalent quantity of nutrients from 1 apple grown in 1914!

What little nutrients are left in produce is further reduced through the food manufacturer's processing. Cooking destroys valuable nutrients too.

Even lightly steaming foods will cause necessary enzymes to be destroyed. The cooking process itself stimulates white cell activity because your body sees cooked food as an invader to be destroyed (See raw foods diet.)

If you were to eat at least 51 percent of your food raw, white cell activity would not be triggered.

The lifeless food consumed on an ongoing basis leads to malnutrition. Chronic disease is in the rise because of malnourishment. A weakened immune system has virtually no defense against rampant inflammation which leads to heart disease and cancer.

Most people do their food shopping at a supermarket. But do you realize that produce travels 1,500 to 2,000 miles to reach a typical supermarket? That produce is at least five days old.

The answer to this technological disaster is a return to organic and sustainable agriculture. The largest study ever conducted on organic food found the following:

• Organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants
• Organic produce had higher levels of beneficial minerals like iron and zinc
• Milk from organic herds contained up to 90 percent more antioxidants

The good nutrition that organic and greenfed food provides enables your body to heal itself. Food activates your body's healing mechanism.

"Good health makes a lot of sense, it just doesn't make a lot of dollars."

Food (nutrition) can treat and even cure diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, anxiety and depression, and cancer. The only downside is that healing food doesn't generate a profit for Big Pharma (the pharmaceutical corporations.)
Food Matters has an excellent video on the importance of using food instead of drugs as medicine. This video can only be viewed free through October 8, 2011. Please don't miss it. Also, share it with family and friends.