The Mirror's Health , Lifestyle and Fashion
Is food medicine?
At 11:30a.m, she makes her “green smoothie” – a sludge of dandelion leaves, avocado and nuts. For snack, some servings of fruits.
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Finally, for her last meal at 4 p.m, she eats something like grilled chicken, steamed vegetables and a few spoonfuls of rice. Since Adjoa wants to lose weight and make her health a priority, she doesn’t eat bread and hasn’t had a dessert in months.
Surprisingly enough, there’s nothing unusual about how Adjoa eats. Many health fanatics follow similar regiments in a bid to look and feel good. It’s true that dietary habits and choices influence disease risk and have profound effects on ones overall health.
While certain foods may trigger chronic health conditions, others offer powerful medicinal and protective qualities. Thus, people argue that food is medicine.
Food can heal, however, its role in nourishing the body has been lost among an avalanche of fads and quackery.
Diet alone cannot and shouldn’t replace medicine in all situations. Although some illnesses can be prevented, treated, or even cured by dietary and lifestyle changes, others cannot. It’s time to prescribe a dose of practical and mindful eating.
Medicines are substances used to maintain health and prevent or treat diseases. Using this viewpoint, food could be said to be medicine. In its wholesome form, food provides nutrients needed to promote health and protect one from many diseases.
These nutrients include vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibre, protein, healthy fats and much more. Individual foods have their own unique set of nutrients to meet ones nutritional needs, thus eating a variety of foods ensure that you’d be getting a diverse range of nutrients that work synergistically.
As such, instead of taking vitamin C in a tablet form for example, why not eat an orange, which contains vitamin C, along with fibre and other nutrients all working together to keep you healthy. Or better still, combine it with other fruits and vegetables to be eaten throughout the day for optimal nutrient intake.
In terms of food being used as a cure, the term “food as medicine” is often misquoted and used by unscrupulous people to sell fad diets. For example, some people suggest cinnamon as a cure for type 2 diabetes.
However, if you consume it, though your diet is still unhealthy, you wouldn’t see any significant results.
Eating a particular food, therefore, shouldn’t be used as a “cure-all” and cannot compensate for poor lifestyle choices.
While eating healthily does help in treating many lifestyle diseases, a multi-disciplinary approach is much more beneficial. Lastly, the idea of healing what ails you with food is tempting because medicine can be scary sometimes.
Eating a balanced variety of wholesome foods help to treat and prevent many diseases
If you have the opportunity, why not eat healthily as a preventive “medicine”, rather than be forced to swallow drugs?
Think of food as nature’s preventive medicine – without any side effects. Of course, disease risk and development are quite complex. Although a poor diet can cause or contribute to illnesses, not all diseases can be prevented through diet alone.
Many other factors, which add up to good health, need to be considered – genetics, stress, age, infections, exercise, occupational hazards, smoking and alcohol use.
Food is medicine but only if you’re eating it – and the right ones as such. Eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, starchy carbohydrates, lean meat, fish, eggs, healthy fats and condiments in appropriate proportions are good for the mind and body – boosting ones immune system while providing energy, among other benefits.
On the flip side, if you’re eating junk food daily with little or no nutrition, your body won’t be receiving all of the nutrients it needs to function properly and health issues could arise.
To conclude, is food medicine? This question remains contentious. Good nutrition is a good foundation for good health. Diet-related diseases cause many deaths worldwide.
Using food as medicine isn’t a new concept. Nevertheless, while it may be overprescribed, medicine is oftentimes invaluable and has done a lot to save lives and treat diseases. But we cannot ignore how critical of what and how much we eat is to our health and well-being.
Eating a balanced variety of wholesome foods help to treat and prevent many diseases.
This is why we should pay attention to what we eat. Ultimately, seeing your food as medicine helps you make better decisions about your diet for your well-being. So keep piling on the leafy greens and snacking on that apple – you’re doing the right thing!
The writer is a registered dietician and a member of the Ghana Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
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