What Is Food Medicine?

When I talk about “food medicine,” I am talking about the everyday power of food to help support the body, maintain health, and encourage better living.

Food medicine is the idea that what we eat can do more than fill us up. The right foods can help nourish the body, support the immune system, help maintain energy, and give the body what it needs to function at its best. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and clean, balanced meals can all become part of a healthy lifestyle.

For me, this subject is personal. My interest in food medicine comes from my own health journey and my desire to eat in a way that helps me stay well. Over time, I have come to believe that healthy eating is one of the most practical steps a person can take to care for the body before problems begin.

But I want to be very clear: the information I share here is for the healthy person who wants to maintain good health. It is not intended for people with established health problems, serious medical conditions, or symptoms that require professional care. Those situations may require a doctor, diagnosis, treatment, medication, or a medically supervised plan.

Food medicine, as I use the term, is not a replacement for medical care. It is a way of thinking about food with more respect. It means seeing food not just as flavor, habit, or convenience, but as something that can either support the body or work against it over time.

A healthy person may use food medicine by choosing more natural foods, reducing heavily processed foods, drinking more water, eating more greens, learning about herbs, and paying attention to how different foods make the body feel. These are simple choices, but simple choices repeated daily can become powerful.

Good health is not built in one meal. It is built through patterns. It is built through what we do most often.

That is the spirit of this blog. I am sharing what I learn, what I practice, and what has shaped my own personal journey toward eating healthier. My goal is to encourage others who are already healthy to stay mindful, stay balanced, and use food as one of the tools for maintaining wellness.

Food medicine begins with a simple idea:

What we put into the body matters.

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by petfamily

Grapes and Mental Health

We've all heard that drinking wine is good for us, but what about those who are on medication or just don't indulge in alcohol? Well, according to the experts, non-fermented (Concord) grapes may be just as healthy for you, especially when it comes to our aging brains. In fact, new studies suggest that drinking a healthy amount of unadulterated (Concord) grape juice can help us stay healthy by keeping our bodies laden with important antioxidants, our minds limber, and our memories on track.

Recent research shows that grape juice given to lab rats (who were approaching the end of their life span) enhanced their cognitive and motor abilities and skills. The researchers placed laboratory animals under a significant series of tests focusing on their short-term memory and their neuro-motor skills. What they found, was that the majority of the tests conducted revealed ample improvement or a trend toward substantial improvement in these essential areas that also significantly affect humans as they age.

These experiments, addressing our continually and increasingly aging population (people these days can look forward to enjoying a healthy life, up into their 80s and beyond, with a new standard reaching the 100-year mark), seek to determine better ways for individuals to grow "old" gracefully and maintain their mental and physical abilities and skills.

Experts went on to add that although these tests and findings are currently in the preliminary stages, they assert that much (previous) research has identified (red, concord) grapes as containing essential antioxidants that are beneficial for our health for a vast variety of reasons, including lowering cholesterol and warding off serious ailments such as certain types of cancers. Now, drinking Concord grape juice is gaining notoriety for it (seeming) potential to help retard the mental and physical deterioration process that generally has been associated with aging.

Good food good medicine

Welcome to my first blog post for the Food Medicine blog, I actually started collecting information about food and all of its medical qualities on my Pinterest board, Food Medicine. Since that time I have been amazed at the genuine interest in holistic medicine from people, some taking over-the-counter medicines, and others vowing never to take any kind of prescription or over-the-counter medicine. In my life I have seen proof of the value of both kinds of medicines the natural, and not so natural, or Pharmaceutical.

It occurred to me while watching an episode of the television program the Monster Inside Me, a television program that highlights cases of parasites, viruses, and other nasty alien organisms that take up residence in our bodies and reek-havoc sometime effecting our immune system, causing paralysis  even death, in some cases.   My interest was aroused also because I realized they were not talking about afflictions happening in far-away-lands, even though several of the people featured who did make contract with their ailment while traveling outside the country, bringing them home with them. The real eye opener for me was that these kinks of infections, ailments, and body invasions were going on right here (in the U.S.) right now!

In trying to understand just how and why parasitic warms, or brain-eating-ameba, could happen right here in this country with all of our medical advancement we have, and trying to make sure my travels never ended the way so many of the people featured on that show did. So I started looking for information about the cures for many of the parasitic body snatching invaders. The doctors on the television show were able to diagnose then treat the patient with just the right medicine to eradicate the infecting invader, in most cases before the body invader could do any serious damage to its host.

What really got my attention during the reading I was doing on the subject of parasitic invasion was the effect natural foods, herbs had, not only controlling but curing many of the patients who were living with parasites inside them. That was when my drive began to learn what living with the right kinds of herbs as part of a healthy diet could do to prevent a person from becoming infected by parasites. I think I should say here that with regard to most of the good news I have come to know about herbs my parasite obsession is one of the extreme concerns that I have.

The majority of my concerns and interest all revolve around how to live a healthier life with herbs and other natural foods. So just in case you were wondering the latter, living healthier with herbs, is what this blog is all about, and not so much parasites. A good diet can not only control parasites but eliminate them so diet and how to incorporate healthy foods in to your body is my true driving force behind this blog.

To me there is nothing like the taste of fresh food, but I was surprise to find out when my kids were younger, and I put the question to them, “do you know where milk comes from,” they smiled and said,

“Sure; it comes from the store.”

I realized that for a lot of kids, and grown-ups too, fresh food nowadays simply means something from the grocery store; not that grocery stores don’t really present fresh food, because I actually have proof that they do, but my idea of fresh food was food grown, and harvested to eat. I realize that growing your own food is something you can really no long do in most area and to be perfectly honest nor would I want to, but that should stop me or anybody from eating healthy. 

I also realized after reading something sent to by a friend over the internet that my children weren’t the only ones with an unclear picture of where fresh food came from. In the article sent to me by a friend a young lady was berating a hunter for killing an animal that he planned to eat. She shouted in capital letters, how cruel it was for hunters to kill innocent animals for food, ending her rant with “why don’t you just buy your meat from the butcher at the grocery store where no animals are actually harmed!”

That made me realize that not everyone share my vision of fresh food but that's okay. I’ll just change that to the "freshest food" you can find, when it comes to keeping the body healthy; especially if you're in to veggies, that would also include the freshest herbs you can find when it comes to the medicinal qualities fresh herbs possess.

Faye's Kitchen