Thomas Edison, the genius who invented the light-bulb, had another ‘lightbulb’ moment when he said this quote:
“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition”.
Food , the medicine of future is actually the medicine of past. It’s very important for an individual to eat properly and have a good digestion which becomes a core of health. The rich medical system is based on prevention; empowering people to be the healers in the first place. If you are on the trajectory of a disease it doesn’t mean you are pre-destined to be there but you can take measures in your diet, activity scale or steps to eliminate the toxins from your body.
In the current scenario, food can be the best medicine or the slowest poison. There should be transparency in the system so that we can make better food choices; which has to do with the nutritional aspects, organically grown, the pesticides, GMOs, heavy metals etc. The strict testing should be used to inform the public about these issues.
My belief is that one should always have better understanding of the food and how it’s grown so that we are well informed what are we feeding to our families which is going to have a cascading effect in the food system. It is going to create a demand and the growers and farmers will create an innovative way to figure out the procedure to grow food without these nasty chemicals which surely harm our physiology and produce food which is higher in the nutritional value. All the chronic health hazards and conditions that we are facing today have strong nutritional and dietary link.
The thing about food is not only those Nutrients, Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats but food has the ability to provide the information that has an impact on our physiology towards the better direction. When there is a certain impact on the physiology, the effect of that can actually change our gene functioning and the ability of a DNA to be expressed or not. We have the profound ability to change our health by choosing healthy food as it is always restorative; not quite overnight but almost so! We can see changes in the pattern of gut microbiome in a matter of days. In regards to the gut microbiome we mention fermented foods a lot and the plant based diet has the fibre and resistant starch which nourishes the microbes that are already present in our intestine.
To sum it up being a health professional, I would always like to advocate to reach out to the organic produce, local farms, choose homemade products be it yoghurt, sauces, purees and other fermented products which will certainly help in reducing the usage of packed canned preservative laden food items from your consumption. It helps us to understand and deepen our healing.
Author is a private practicing dietitian.