History of Food as Medicine: Introduction

If you have ever had a cup of tea with honey to sooth a sore throat, or a bowl of chicken noodle soup, when you were sick, you've used food as medicine. As far as I can tell, food has always been used as medicine.

In 400 B.C. the Greek physician Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine” said, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates realized that food impacts a person’s health, body and mind to help prevent illness as well as maintain wellness.
In Hippocrates’ Greece, as well as across pre-modern Europe and Asia since ancient times, foods were used to affect health. For instance, the juice of liver was squeezed on the eye to treat eye diseases, connected to Vitamin A deficiency. Garlic was used to cure athlete’s foot, and eating ginger was thought to stimulate the metabolism.
In 1747, a British Navy physician, Dr. James Lind, saw that sailors were developing scurvy, a deadly bleeding disorder, on long voyages. He observed that they ate only nonperishable foods such as bread and meat.
Lind’s experiment fed one group of sailors salt water, one group vinegar, and one group limes. Those given limes didn’t develop scurvy. And although Vitamin C wasn’t discovered until the 1930s, this experiment changed the way physicians thought about food, creating a market for nutrition careers. Source.

From curing scurvy with limes to promoting better health with the latest fad diet, there has always been a lot of experimentation in the field of nutrition science. Not surprisingly, the advent of vitamin, or dietary, supplements (I hate supplements) was an advent of the 1930s, when scientists began isolating those properties of food and documenting the ways in which nutrients interact with the body. As with the long history of anything, it is tempting to look for progress and evolution in the narrative, but Dr Andrew Weil and Dr Oz are the John Harvey Kellogg and Frank Orth of the industry today.

The disinformation charlatans contribute to the culture of nutrition makes skeptics like me see nothing but fad diets, when I might actually benefit from making changes to my lifestyle and eating habits.

Dioscorides' Materia Medica, c. 1334 copy in Arabic,
describes medicinal features of cumin and dill.

Do herbal remedies count as food? Is a remedy medicine?

What is medicine? For the purposes of this blog, I will define medicine as a preparation that you participate in, or ingest, to prevent, or treat, sickness. For example, I'm sick... almost in a general way, but it has become overwhelming, so I am experimenting with the anti-inflammatory diet to feel better. The diet itself is prepared by others and I am both participating in it and ingesting it. I am treating the diet as medicine, but I am also treating each meal as medicine, which I prepare (or someone else prepares for me, lucky me).

In doing so, I am participating in the long history of using food as medicine. Even chocolate as medicine has a long history.

The earliest evidence for the medical use of chocolate are to be found in Mesoamerican civilizations: iconographic works and fragments, writings and remnants in the pottery suggest that cacao was prepared in beverage form at least as early as 600 B.C.

But before you bite into that Hershey bar, read the ingredients. Food can hurt you! For centuries, the history of food as medicine tells us we should be careful of what we eat. Morning cartoons were teaching us this in the 1990s.

Moreover, Hershey has played an insidious role in the history of food as medicine for its use of child labour. Nestle is worse with its scandalous baby formula history.

So, while the history of food as medicine is long, it has become most interesting in the last 100-200 years. We've learned a lot about what food can do to improve health, while encountering some cautionary tales. Like the video says, we shouldn't eat food from strangers, like Hershey and Nestle. Read the labels. Has it been approved/inspected by the FDA? Treating food as medicine means not ingesting it, if we don't know what it is!

To find out more about my journey in exploring food as medicine, like my Facebook page.

Why I hate supplements

“Very expensive urine” is the Sheldon Cooper quote I use to describe vitamins and supplements. Every time I think of taking a supplement I am reminded what a terrible idea it is.

Part of me wants to take supplements, that part of me that remembers the love in my grandma’s eyes as she gave me my Flintstone’s chewable. She did what she did out of love and I did the same with my kid. People take vitamins; it is what one does. But are we really risking our health and the health of our children?

The law defines dietary supplements in part as products taken by mouth that contain a "dietary ingredient." Dietary ingredients include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and herbs or botanicals, as well as other substances that can be used to supplement the diet.

As an adult, I haven’t regularly taken any dietary supplements. I used to eat some of my kid’s Flintstone chewables and I bought a supplement recently that was recommended by doctors for reducing the symptoms of arthritis, but I hated the idea and my memory problems made it difficult for me to keep up the habit.

People take supplements for all kinds of reasons according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

People use dietary supplements for a wide assortment of reasons. Some seek to compensate for diets, medical conditions, or eating habits that limit the intake of essential vitamins and nutrients. Other people look to them to boost energy or to get a good night's sleep. Postmenopausal women consider using them to counter a sudden drop in estrogen levels.

I wouldn't be trying the anti-inflammatory diet, if I didn't hope that I would get some benefit from the right kinds of vitamins etc. However, study after study is finding that we can't be sure over-the-counter supplements contain the ingredients listed on the bottle. The University of Guelph found that one in three supplements on the market are fake. The FDA has had similar findings, but there’s still little consumers can do about it.

 

The FDA even says on their website that the law doesn't require supplements to be proven safe before they are marketed, which means that what these little capsules contain could be seriously harmful to you.

The researchers from the CDC and the FDA analyzed representative surveillance data from 63 hospital Emergency Rooms over a 10-year period (2004-2013), and their statistical analysis projected about 23,000 ER visits annually resulting from ingestion of supplements, about one-tenth of which led to hospitalization. 

According to the authors, “Such visits commonly involve cardiovascular manifestations from weight-loss or energy products among young adults and swallowing problems, often associated with micronutrients, among older adults.” But because of irresponsible, two-decade-old legislation, the answer to the critical question, “How many Americans are killed each year due to ingestion of so-called dietary-nutritional supplements?” cannot be answered. 

The culprit is the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Congress virtually exempted supplements from oversight under DSHEA, which bars federal authorities from requiring evidence that herbal remedies are safe or effective, or even that the dosage information on the label is correct. Since 1994, these products have not been subject to the same regulatory requirements as prescription drugs—or in fact to any meaningful regulation at all. Source.

You can read the details of the DSHEA here.

Imagine you get one of the two in the three bottle of vitamin C that actually contain the 500 mg of vitamin C promised on the bottle. Some vitamin C supplements on the market contain 1,000 mg. An adult only needs 65-90 mg of vitamin C per day. Taking that much extra vitamin C rarely causes adverse reactions, like diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps, rarely. Luckily, vitamin C is water soluble, which means that the excess 910 mg of vitamin C become expensive urine.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case with some other vitamins, like vitamin A, which can build up toxic levels in the body. A 2001 study by the National Cancer Institute found that men who took vitamin E supplements were 17% more likely to develop prostate cancer. Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study found that vitamin A increases a smoker’s chance of developing lung cancer by 18%.

The third most popular supplement in the US is fish oil. Fish and fish oil are recommended by Dr Weil as part of the anti-inflammatory diet. Manufacturers of fish oil supplements even put a nice lady in the grocery store near my house, who gave me free samples. As I’ve told you before, I'm sick and I want to feel better. It is so tempting to believe in the magic pill, especially if that pill seems natural and inexpensive, but I’m glad I didn’t take those fish oil supplements.

As long as it’s not rancid, fish oil isn’t bad for you. Norway is one of the world's largest producers of fish oil. However, one study in Norway found that 95% of non-prescription fish oil on the market is rancid. When fish oil goes rancid, the omega-3 oxidizes creating free radicals. Free radicals actually encourage inflammation and cancer.

A study different than the Norwegian one found between 11%-62% of over-the-counter fish oil pills showed oxidation. Source.

I don’t want to take supplements that cause inflammation, especially not when I’m on an anti-inflammatory diet. I’d rather have a burger and fries, but I won’t.

Fish are a reliable source of fish oil, just like carrots are a reliable source of vitamin A, and oranges provide plenty of vitamin C.

I’m not saying that you should never ever take a supplement. In certain circumstances, you may benefit from taking a supplement. In those circumstances, your doctor will prescribe one to you and you should buy it from a pharmacist from a supplier that has been regulated. Otherwise, who knows what you’ll be ingesting?