Recently, there has been a lot of chatter about ‘food as medicine.’ Taken at face value, this sounds like a good concept. However, history has shown that many meaningful movements that got off to a good start, quickly became hijacked along the way by greedy corporations or government regulators. Thus, I cannot help but wonder if this is yet another well-meaning movement about to be seized by government regulators at the request of big pharma.
Last month, Moms Across America posted the following: USDA Makes Surprising Commitments to Organic Food, Access to Local Food, and Food as Medicine.
Does this mean more regulations about what can be stated or claimed about the benefits of nutritious organic food? Or, does it mean more government control of the rapidly growing organic food industry? Perhaps, the US is obsessed with capturing Russia’s growing organic export market. News reports claim Russia has committed to expanding its agriculture to accommodate the global demand for organic food.
Most American states require anything used as medicine to be regulated. Do we want our food regulated as a medicine? That could mean government regulators would dictate the narrative of what is healthy and censor vital information about health and nutrition. Also, it could force the organic industry to accept GMOs and other contaminants in their food. Control of the organic food industry by corporate implants in government would be a disaster for organic consumers.
Time will soon tell if Secretary Vilsack is sincere or acting as a representative for powerful food and chemical agriculture industries.
In 1987, a book called Food is Your Medicine by Dr. Henry G. Bieler, MD, described how food healed many diseases. In essence, food replenished nutrient deficiencies so the body could heal itself. The body heals itself and functions well when given the right conditions.
According to Dr. Bieler, twenty-five hundred years ago on the island of Cos in classical Greece, a bearded physician-teacher, Hippocrates, sat in the shade of an Oriental plane tree on a lovely hillside and admonished his wide-eyed circle of medical students in one of his most precise aphorisms: “Thy food shall be thy remedy.”
Here is an example of how misquoting someone or a shuffle of words can change the meaning. There is a difference between using food as a remedy and classifying it as a medicine.
Food is so much better than medicine. Food is a substance that nourishes the body to maintain life and promotes growth. Medicine treats or manages a disease. It doesn’t cure it.
Food is a very effective remedy because disease starts with a deficiency, an imbalance, or contamination. Thus, it only stands to reason that if you have a nutritional deficiency, it will eventually produce a disease. If you eliminate the nutritional deficiency with good organic food, your remedy is far better than medicine. (Infectious diseases fall into a different category.)