Food As Medicine
We’ve all heard the saying “you are what you eat”, right? But how deep have you actually thought about it? We tend to think of it on the more superficial level such as, you eat fatty food, you’ll get fat, or you eat greasy food you’ll have greasy skin or hair, you eat lots of protein, you gain lots of muscle. However, I want to invite you to truly embrace the phrase and look at it almost as if through a microscope, so to say.
About a year ago, I was listening to a lecture by Professor Robert D. Siegel of Harvard Medical School/ Cambridge Health Alliance titled “The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being” and in it he spoke in depth about mindful eating. This led to him describing an apple as it’s being eaten and asking the listener, “…at what point then, is the apple no longer an apple, but instead a part of you…” and this truly made me rethink what I eat.
As a health coach, I was already well aware of my eating habits, what is healthy, what my body needs, and all that jazz. However, it wasn’t until I started using a more mindful way of eating and asking the question “Do I really want that to become a part of me?” that I understood the true meaning of the saying “you are what you eat”. It is now that I am fully aware of the ecosystem we are a part of, and how nature supplies us with all that we need.
So, let’s look at it in a more scientific term: You break down the apple as it enters the body, by your chewing and your saliva, then it gets broken down even more as it hits your stomach acid, and further more as it makes its way through your intestines. Once it has reached the size in which our cells can recognize, it is then taken where it is needed. Literally, becoming parts of you. An apple is recognizable to your cells, its simple, the cells understand it through the ecosystem we have set up with our natural environment for thousands of years. What is not as easily recognizable though are things like food coloring, MSG, or the hundreds of other chemicals created in a lab and not in nature.
When we are ingesting processed food that is unrecognizable even to our vocabulary (I’m referring to you Diacetyl 2,3-butanedione, in microwave popcorn), it is unrecognizable to our cells, too. Therefore, it is a toxin. Over time these toxins build up and the body will inflame and this will lead to symptoms, then illness.
The cure then is to load the body with more synthetic chemicals like pharmaceuticals, but instead back track and start at the most basic form of information for our cells: food from nature. As Dr. Mark Hyman states in his book , “Food is the code that programs your biology. You can literally upgrade or downgrade your biological software with every single bite.”
You truly can. I have done it and I have seen my clients do it. I have seen skin rashes and acne healed by a change of diet, aches and pain disappear with diet, energy and mood shifts with a simple change in what is digested and absorbed in the body. Which leads me to absorption!
While we are what we eat, we are mostly what we can absorb. This can be tricky. If you are used to a diet of processed food loaded with toxins you are probably not going to absorb the nutrients well enough once they hit the cells. Why? Because what these toxins do is, they either block the nutrients from being absorbed or they mimic and trick the cells into believing they are receiving one thing when they are really receiving another. Therefore excreting the real nutrient as excess or waste. That is how mal-nourishment happens and why many Americans, even when taking supplements are still deficient in so many nutrients. One doesn’t usually think of the western diet as mal-nourished, but there’s the irony.
We all know certain foods (from nature) have certain nutrients. Like how avocado is loaded with potassium and berries are full of antioxidants. Or how fiber feeds our gut microbiome, which is a huge component of our overall health. Or how broccoli has 90% of our daily value (81.2mg) of vitamin C in just one cup! This is how our cells see our food: as the fuel to keep them (you) alive! All of these nutrients have a specific role in our bodies and when we aren’t receiving them—or worse, when we are receiving toxins in their place—the body sends out alarms in the form of inflammation, pain, and illness.
When you give the body what it needs, with time it will regulate itself out and re-wire itself through what we call healing, to readily absorb all the nutrients you are giving it. Making you a truly nutrient dense human being!
How do we get there though? If we haven’t been using our food to benefit us, how can we, if we are mal-nourished, sick, or toxic? The answer is…you guessed it: through food as medicine. The fruits and vegetables given to us by nature have exactly what we need to cleanse the body of toxins, nourish the cells, and heal. As long as we are crowding our plates with a delicious variety of nature’s bounty, we are creating the perfect terrain for health! Giving our cells the exact information they can recognize to keep our functions working and transforming each piece of information into beautiful, supple skin, hair, nails, muscle, tendon, vein, etc!
The form of crowding out is a technique I use with clients that works every time. You start by adding a little more of the good each day. Drink a little more water, add a little more greens to your plate, and eat a handful of nuts before grabbing a processed snack bar. Always adding in the healthy, whole foods option, and eventually crowding out the processed, unhealthy options. Incorporating this method to your daily food choices is the perfect place to start.
Cleansing is also another way food is medicine. We use fruits, vegetables, and herbs as a way to remove the toxic buildup and move it out of the body. I do recommend working with a professional when cleansing, as it can lead to side effects since you are releasing toxins and you don’t want them to re-circulate back in your body.
As we have seen here, food is the carrier of information as well as the information itself for the body— and it is also the body. The process from the apple being an apple to then becoming you is simply called digestion. The same goes for the process of a donut being a donut to then becoming you. One represents health, the other illness. At every meal we have the choice to continually heal our bodies and become one with nature’s bounty, or continue to harm our body with toxic ingredients it cannot use, creating illness. The choice is easy when you’re ready to heal!
Tatiana Mota is a Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach who specializes in helping moms reach their healthiest selves and showing them how to pass on that knowledge to their families. She has been working with Sprigs on social media for almost a year. She and her husband have three children and currently reside in Orlando, FL.