Food as Medicine

Today is day two of my 10 Green Smoothie Cleanse. I am undertaking this effort with my eldest child who is a studying to be a nutritionist at UIC. I will be making several changes to my diet due to the fact that the last year, or more, was spent with multiple doctor visits and testing. I was consistently complaining about discomfort and all the effort resulted in a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a chronic knee pain syndrome, and some food allergies. At 45 years old, I am undergoing some large changes in my lifestyle. I had already transitioned from a full-time production chef to a part-time culinary educator as my health was negatively impacting my career. The chef life requires long hours of physically demanding work, even us pastry chefs are standing for 90% of the time, and we never work a 8 hour shift, 9 to 5pm, its is most of the time 10-18 hours a day.

My relationship with food is going to change once again. As a small child I lived in a vegetarian household, then when I was a bit older that changed to the typical American diet, then when I entered culinary school naturally the food education involved resulted in some healthier changes for me, and now that I am dealing with disease I am making another adjustment. The topic of food as medicine, and when our society changed food thinking from medicine to solely pleasure, in our society came up in my conversation with my biological father. The interview needs to be rerecorded as the technology failed, so stay tuned. He was a vegetarian but now eats a macrobiotic style of diet.

The consumption of food can have multiple effects upon your entire health and longevity. Prior to WWII, a large segment of our populous knew many remedies for common aliments, some effective and some not, but the concept of relying upon natural remedies was the standard. The medical community was responsible for the decrease of this type of thinking by researching the items for effectiveness and dismissing the ones that could not be proven. However, it is my opinion, that many of the 'medicine' that were sold and recommended, at the turn of the century and later, were not effective but profitable. Also, the business of pharmacology isn't always the best remedy but it is the most advertised. Therefore, the American population was taught to only seek pills to cure every ill.

If an American is told that they are having some hypertensive issues, for example, the first thing that their doctor and the patient runs to for correction is a medication instead of a diet adjustment. This type of thinking keeps patients both relaying on pills and still consuming a diet that isn't beneficial, still consuming some things that are degrading their health but fighting the effects by taking more and more medication. This is a negative sum path. Why are we still eating hot sauce when you are getting headaches because your pressure is too high?

There is no getting out of the need for food, and who would want to? However, thinking or food as only a pleasure, leaves so much of the truth unexplored. Food is a civilizing force, a social communicator, a nutrition effort, a required activity, and has molded our cultures and the touch of history can be found on every plate around the world. Food tourism has always been around but is now is branded and packaged for consumption. I find it horrible that Americans go to over countries and seek out and eat McDonald's and KFC. Learning about other food traditions, trying new foods, and expanding your food vocabulary is the best way to begin to understand the people who habitat the country visited. When you begin to understand some one's food then you begin to understand them.

Food allergies, medical issues of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, gout, rickets, scurvy, migraines,  high cholesterol, are all health issues that can be eliminated and/or controlled by dietary changes. This thinking is not a fallacy of the alternative medicine tree hugging folks it is rational thinking and comprehensive life effecting issues.

Okay rant over for now....
Every day is Worth Celebrating!