WHY WE SHOULD THINK OF FOOD AS MEDICINE

Hi! so! a thought popped into my head today and I wanted to write about it so I did. I feel like this is a good place to post it because I don't have a blog or anything. Here you go :)

I have not previously put that much thought into food, or the role it plays aside from quenching hunger and giving me energy and tasting good. But lately I have been paying more attention to the effects of how I treat my body and by extension the earth, and I am learning through experience how interconnected everything is. Absolutely everything. My mind wandered today to the concept of “healthiness”, so I want to talk about what the term “healthy” implies when it comes to food. My mind, personally, immediately goes to vegetables, balanced diet, less fat, less sugar, less sodium, sustainable, organic, local, non gmo branding. But, once I think about it a bit more, I realize it's illogical to try to define the “healthiness” of anything edible.

Food doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not being food just to be food, it is consumed by a body for many different reasons. Different foods have different benefits, both mental and physical, and many foods also come with negatives, or side-effects. For instance milk is well known to be beneficial for bone health, but can also cause stomach problems. Fatty foods are essential for energy, warmth and muscle growth, but can also cause heart issues. Alcohol, even, may be beneficial for heart health and provide temporary stress relief, but can cause headaches and long-term organ damage. The same can be said about medicine and supplements- there are great benefits, but also sometimes very great dangers. It seems, in fact, that the greater the health benefits something has, like medicine, the greater the chance of consequences if consumed incorrectly. 

That brings me back to the concept of “healthiness”- we can only measure the health of a food in relation to how, why, when, in what quantities, within what diet and by what kind of body it is consumed. Things with known side-effects should be consumed in moderation, and should probably only be a priority if the person consuming it is in particular need of its benefits. That is the real reason why a balanced diet is so important, and it’s not just about eating the same amount of everything. Each food group provides different health benefits- too much or too little of any depending on your needs and your body and mind just won't work right. Like grabbing tylenol to treat a headache, you should know the benefits of the food you have so when you need those benefits, you know what food to eat. It’d help you pay more attention to your body and emotions. Maybe eventually you’d know yourself so well you won’t need to wait to use food in response to your needs, but in anticipation of them.

The things that live and grow on this earth, including us, are supposed to be consumed and repurposed into energy for future life. Nothing can live without that process. Humans have been doing things very wrong for way too long. We have gotten way off track. What’s all this about having to pay for food? We can’t survive without it. I think the only reason we decided it’s acceptable to sell food is because there are still ways to grow your own food, in gardens, so technically it’s still a choice. When people first started selling food everybody already ate for free, because they made it themselves from their own gardens and gave it to friends. But tending a garden and preparing your own food is becoming less and less feasible for much of the population. We need more community gardens, and for that to happen we need people to be using community gardens more. We need people who want to share food with their neighbors, we need people to teach others how to grow and make their own food for free. Not cheap, free. Interesting how the opposite of free is imprisonment.