Rethinking Food as Medicine
/In preparation for fall retreats and a consciousness medicine group, at which I’ll be presenting meaningful food experiences, my colleagues and I have been discussing the concept of “food as medicine.” In the functional nutrition realm, food is our anchor, so this idea is not new. But what does it really mean?
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” Attributed to Hippocrates, a Greek physician dubbed “the father of modern medicine,” this quote insinuates we can heal disease with food, emphasizing the importance of nutrients on health. Great! Looking first to food, often I find myself down the rabbit hole of “functional foods” – foods known to help heal certain conditions or which benefit certain organs, systems, and functions in the body. Research supports food-from-the-earth as a healing tool and helps “convince” clients to eat more, let’s say, colorful vegetables and fruits.
Yet, doesn’t the quote also trivialize food as the pathway to vanquishing illness, rather than suggesting food as nourishing vitality?
In Western societies, we view food as “fuel” and we eat for “health.” We forget that food is a gift of nature and a central component to our existence. We humans are a product of food + nature; hence, food is the essence of human life. In fact, a lack of nature-derived foods gives rise to a surplus of adverse symptoms, which means food can be both the source of wellbeing and the source of disease.
Let’s chew on this some more: “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” also suggests that food and medicine are one and the same.
Down in the rabbit hole, I discovered that not only is the quote not found in any of Hippocrates’ 60 writings (he may not have written them all), but also Hippocrates recorded observations about both food and medicine – as separate entities. He developed the humoral model of evaluation, working with the physical and the environmental assessment of the four humors – alongside the four elements, four temperaments, four personalities, and four organs. He associated “epidemics” with changes in seasons; explained diagnosis and prognosis, genetic influence on disease, and how to perform surgery; prescribed medications like purgatives and aspirin-like nutrients derived from a tree. Hippocrates counseled physicians to use wisdom in their practice and practice with wisdom, and patients to walk more and eat less.
Modern medicine, rooted in Hippocrates’ 2400-year old observations, instructions, and ethics, began shifting in the early 1800’s when the first hospitals were built. Doctors started viewing ailments in the body – and connecting symptoms with disease – independently from a patient’s life and environment. Then, when research laboratories sprang forth, scientists began looking for disease under a microscope, rather than through stories.
Subsequently, many of Hippocrates’ views on foods, our ways of eating, exercise, and ecosystem have been buried in Western ideologies or reduced to data. Of course, it’s necessary to diagnose disease and treat ailments, and scientific research offers a wealth of information! Only recently are we returning to a focus on prevention, wellbeing, and psyche; medicine that inspires wisdom in practitioners and accounts for individuality in patients; observations that include environment, narrative, and our innate potential to heal.
I’m hopeful we’re also moving toward perceiving food as the sustenance of life and medicine as an art to healing.
Resources
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18392218/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212826313000924
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hippocrates
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC195119/pdf/mlab00237-0040.pdf