621 WHY DID WE SEPARATE FOOD FROM MEDICINE?

[michaelo]

Hippocrates said, “Let your medicine be your food, and let your food be your medicine.” But Hippocrates was yesterday. Today we take pharmaceutical medicines, and they lead us to ask….

Why did we separate our food from our medicine?

[michaelo]

Hippocrates said, “Let your medicine be your food, and let your food be your medicine.” But Hippocrates was yesterday, and yesterday is gone. Today we take pharmaceutical medicines, but they lead us to ask….

Why did we separate our food from our medicine? (#621)

Throughout history people followed the advice of Hippocrates and ate themselves to health with food, or at least, tried to do so. But somewhere in the not to distant past, people began substituting slow-acting medicinal foods for fast-acting pharmaceutical chemicals that worked wonders on the body, and so to heck with Hippocrates.

Pharmaceuticals not only work wonders on the body, they may also be protected with patents. Consequently, a multi-billion dollar food chain grew up around pharmaceuticals. Between 1998 to 2008, the pharmaceutical industry protected this food chain by spending $1.5 billion dollars lobbying the U.S. government. (That would give each Senator $15 million dollars, were those monies so invested!)

But now foods and medicines appear to be coming back together in the form of neutraceuticals and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Neutraceuticals are extracts of foods claimed to have medicinal properties. These extractions are usually concentrated in capsules or solutions. GMO foods have a health related element, such as a vitamin, fused to the gene of a plant, which then produces more of that element through its growth.

As concentrated plant matter, neutraceuticals may not be protected by patents. As new life, genetically modified organisms may be protected. And so again we ask…

Which will win the money: neutraceuticals or genetically modified organisms? (#621)

[seaseal]

To answer the question, I'd say *money* is the big reason. Control of supply, specialization, exclusivity, gender bias, and money.

Another question in this area might be, "In what ways has separating food from medicine benefited us?"

Certain kinds of modern allopathic medicine either deny food has any medicinal effectiveness or heavily lobbies against its use as a healing substance. I say *certain kinds* because of the options available to us here, such as Chinese medicine and chiropractors, who both use food such as herbs as preventative medicine or to heal. Other modern medical practices such as homeopathy also use non-chemical food materials for healing.

In my first example, most M.D.s have had perhaps 3 hours of training in nutrition, if that. One hundred percent of the healing solutions I've been given from M.D.s involve surgery or non-food drugs--i.e., those made from chemicals.

My other example might be a stretch but it's on my mind after a recent newspaper article about the big "Pot Bust" of people in Aptos growing pot to sell to people in Texas.

Medical marijuana is not only a political hot potato, it is a great example of the desire by the AMA to control substances used in healing. Having the collective might of *law enforcement* monitor and enforce your goal of limiting the supply of healing substances so you can make more money is a pretty good gig.

Historically it was women who managed the knowledge about what substances added in good health and in healing. The deep knowledge of herbs, minerals, and food combinations was nearly wiped out in Europe by making extreme examples of the health practitioners of the time: they were burned at the stake.

Now, we are learning more about things such as how much nutrition is in a conventionally farmed potato versus an organically grown potato. Newly discovered creatures--archaea-- [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060817103131.htm] supply nitrogen to plants when they're present in the soil and not killed off by fertilizers from petro-chemical businesses.

So, I'd like to see support for looking at food as a medicinal aspect. Monitoring the soil carefully--after caring for the soil sustainably--to ensure nutritious food would be a great goal. Bring back more herbal knowledge and test it, don't patent it. Explore some of the theories of diet that differ from our USDA food triangle and provide healthy food to those in need of it.

Test large numbers of people and what they eat to gather data about the consequences of things currently sold widely such as soda pop, or as a friend calls it, *corporate sugar water* or meat from cattle fed on substances that aren't grass. Ask for protection for our food from radiation or other *treatments* that might render it not only non nutritious but actually dangerous.

Encourage government support for owner-occupied farms only, and train farmers in the relationship between healthy soil and nutritious crops. Then we could eat as if our lives depended on it.

[BlessedFarm]

"So, I'd like to see support for looking at food as a medicinal aspect. Monitoring the soil carefully--after caring for the soil sustainably--to ensure nutritious food would be a great goal. Bring back more herbal knowledge and test it, don't patent it. Explore some of the theories of diet that differ from our USDA food triangle and provide healthy food to those in need of it.

Test large numbers of people and what they eat to gather data about the consequences of things currently sold widely such as soda pop, or as a friend calls it, *corporate sugar water* or meat from cattle fed on substances that aren't grass."

Dr. Weston A. Price already did some great studies, on isolated cultures that had access to only traditional foods, rather than industrilized foods, and made some pretty profound discoveries. Check out the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Price-Pottenger Nutritional Foundation to learn more about what they found! It PROVES that food can be an amazing medicine, and preventative, if used correctly, which is FAR from the typical American way of eating and thinking.

Kim
Blessed Farm, WA