Food as Medicine
Good food is like a symphony
Do I still need supplements?
In the Mediterranean culture one of the most popular topics of everyday conversation is food: ingredients, methods of cooking, tastes and sources of food. I have been privileged to have many international friends and sitting in these conversations was quite baffling for me to start with as in the North we don’t do this: Papa used to say that the best thank you is that you eat a lot! That’s all the food conversation that went on in my close vicinity so it took awhile to start appreciating this food talk.
However, the talking about food is actually quite an important factor in many levels as digestion starts with the thought of food, everybody’s mouth waters when they think of their favourite good! Chewing is the next step, mixing saliva and enzymes with your food, signaling your stomach that it is showtime. In the cultures where you eat with your fingers, also your hands send signals to your stomach what kind of food to expect! When you give your attention to your food, you become like an eating gorilla: you come in peace. Good thoughts get your stomach juices going thus preparing your body for nourishment. If your mood of food taking is relaxed and happy, your stomach will be happy and relaxed too, happily doing its job. This in and of itself is half work done with digestion, and you will have a very pleasant and happy meal. And it all ends with a burb, stomach’s message to say that this is all I can handle, enough for the time being.
Sometimes, however, you may have doubts whether you get all you need from your food, especially when you are pushed for time to cook, use a lot of readymade meals or are otherwise stressed. And sometimes it is necessary to resort to these powerhouses: we will talk about that at some other blog. If you consider this, bear in mind that supplements can also be the easy way out and there are always, always consequences in choosing the easy way out. In several ways in life, unfortunately… Many health professionals tell you that they are a waste of money and that the only thing you achieve with them is very expensive toilet trips. There can be a lot of truth to that I will jot down my thoughts about supplementation at another blog.
Symphony is the word that comes to my mind when I talk about good food and the way it provides nutrition, all instruments playing their part in harmony. If they are organically grown in a soil that is not industrially farmed and but well organically fertilized, they have the nutrients available and many times the raw vegetables have the right digestive enzymes to help the digestion process are built in them. There are also the balancing ingredients that kick off your digestive organs, like fats with proteins: if you eat proteins without fats, your liver doesn’t get the message to produce any bile, which aids protein metabolization. All this is in the symphony of foods played by a highly trained orchestra.
Supplements I would regard as a lone instrument that tries to play a symphony, the individual sound may be beautiful but does not come to the full potential. Like an orchestra, all nutrients work together, iron with vitamin C, Calcium with Magnesium, vitamin B’s always in a complex and once you take one, you may use up your reserves of another. Their workings are magical and wonderous, we need to be quite observant to know what works and how. I have done quite a bit of research and experimentation and I will write about this in my next blog and I will link it here!
Using food as medicine, like Hippocrates advised, is the most noble of choices as this makes you use your body’s digestion abilities to work without shortcuts. Mother Nature has been tested for millions of years and she does her best for us. Heal and maintain your system such that it is able to absorb vitamins and minerals and then eat delicious and nutritious food with lots of pleasure. This sounds good and simple and here are some tried and tested suggestions: less sugar, avoid antibiotics, eat your greens as much as possible raw.
We as Candidacoaches are helping our clients to optimize their digestive system so that absorbing all the goodness of your food is possible. The method will help anybody to clean their system and we believe that even if you don’t have Candida present, you can still benefit from learning to cook deliciously, use your food as medicine while you also enjoy the taste of it. You will be able to heal your digestive system with delicious food and learn to keep it up for the rest of your life. This is what our programme is built towards and it will benefit anyone who takes the course as and their family will get to come along for a ride!
