Using Our Food As Medicine

The idea of food as medicine excites me. The thought that every day we can choose to put in our mouths or take into our bodies substances that can add to our ability to live our lives as fully and vibrantly as we possibly can is exhilarating! We can go to our fridge or our pantry or our fruit bowl and choose life, choose a powerful nutrient, choose a magical healing element to become a part of us. We can go outside to our garden, to our herb pots, to our lemon tree and pick, pluck from the earth a gift that can help us feel well – right now and into the future. We don’t need a spoonful of sugar to help get this medicine down. We don’t need a prescription. We don’t need to sit in a waiting room flicking aimlessly through ancient copies of Women’s Day or National Geographic only to be shuffled through with a 5 minute consult that’s supposed to cure all our ailments. We don’t need a university degree or some kind of highly specialised knowledge other than that gained by simply being human and breathing.

This medicine, food, is available to us anywhere and everywhere we go. We are bombarded by ads and pictures and conversations and good deals and markets and packets and special occasions and visions and smells all day, everyday. The influence of food is inescapable for food is life. Food is a drug that can harm or heal. Food is a consistent, cheap, easy, convenient and legal pleasure. Food is big business. Food is medicine.

Somewhere along the line though we forgot that last bit though. We forgot that food has the mystical power to either heal or harm. We forgot that food influences us every single day of our lives both internally and externally. We forgot that food is life in the most profound way imaginable. Oops.

The result is that many of us no longer recognise what real food is or are aware of how we eat each morsel that touches our lips. We don’t look at food and see medicine. We look at food and see an end to hunger, an end to distraction. We look at food and see fuel to keep us going or quick energy or fat or protein or carbohydrates. We look at food and see a yummy taste, emotional satisfaction, convenience or “time in a packet”. We look at food and see calories and kilojoules as good or bad as right or wrong. We look at food through tired eyes and busy minds looking to get our most immediate needs met.

Food moves further and further down the scale of importance, far below time and money and other people, far below our state of mind in any given moment. Food has been relegated to petrol, sustenance, a gap filler, a pleasure, and for socialising only. Food is taken for granted and ignored just like we ignore signals from our bodies over many years – just like we ignore the needs of our bodies. We forgot, somewhere along the line about the transformative aspect of food and the incredible power of the medicine chest we keep in our fridges and pantries and fruit bowls. We started grabbing things to fill a hole, to munch, crunch and slurp above and beyond our physiological requirements.

And that’s when things started getting really serious…That’s when we started getting sick.

We can change all that though. We can heal ourselves. Learning specifically about the gift of certain foods and the nutrients they contain is not only fascinating but fun and empowering no matter what your level of health is right now. Beginning to use food as medicine is the first step on a mosey, jog or canter to better health. There’s a whole other world out there, there’s a whole other world in that apple you’re eating… Enjoy!