Let Food be thy Medicine…not thy Drug
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates
There is some wisdom in this statement but it’s becoming misunderstood. This is evident with the modern food and supplement industry putting a health claim on just about everything you can think of. It can be said that we no longer eat but rather we ‘dose’ certain items. This thinking has to change if we’re going to have a healthier and balanced attitude towards food and nutrition.
As a kid food is still food, you eat it because it tastes good, or because it’s ‘dinner time’, or because you might actually be hungry.
As we become adults many other factors come into play that start distorting our view of food. Some of us start medicating with food and use it to de-stress, or deal with emotional problems. It becomes a social tool, as well as a reward and punishment system. It can become an object to control when the rest of your life is out of control, and company when you are bored. It ceases to simply be ‘food’ and starts become ‘medicine’ for bad or for worse.
The most extreme distortion of food is when it transcends being food or medicine and starts to become a drug.
Food as Drug
If you view a food item as the sum of its vitamins, minerals, protein, carb, fiber and fat content, then you might just be seeing food more like a drug than as simply food or even as ‘medicine. You may be asking yourself: What is the difference between ‘medicine’ and ‘drug’.
This is what drugs look like
Medicine can come in many forms and provides a benefit in some way. Exercise can be medicine, a talk with a therapist can be medicine, a vacation from a stressful daily work routine can be therapeutic and considered medicine. Food can also be considered medicine when it provides a benefit to your overall system.
A drug on the other hand suggests a dose response. A dose response means that you can measure an increasing or changing effect and increases or changing doses of a given substance. For example: 5oo mg of tylenol will get rid of your headache, 50,000 mg might give you liver failure. This is a dose response.
Modern food and supplement marketing is starting to turn more and more foods into drugs. Now the chemical constituents of food can be extracted, concentrated and delivered in pill form. Instead of adding blueberries to meal, you can take the extract and get all the purported benefits. Or you can measure the exact ‘dose’ of blueberries required to get the supposed benefit.
This is starting to become common for more and more foods that we used to recognize simply as food. How many oranges does it take to get your daily ‘dose’ of vitamin C? How many servings grains does it take to get your daily ‘dose’ of fiber? How much chicken do you need to eat to get your daily ‘dose’ of protein and branched chain amino acids?
Viewing food as having a dose response changes it from being either food or even medicine into a drug. I think this is a destructive way to view food. Once you head down this path it is hard to regain a sense of what food is supposed to be. You will soon view all foods as a drug that is either for therapy or abuse. This leads to feelings of guilt and regret when you’re not eating the correct food/drug and the correct dose at the correct time of day…a truly miserable way to live.
There has to be a better way.
Food as Medicine
This is what food looks like
Coming to a better understanding that food can be medicine but not a drug requires you to start viewing food as an interactive part of your life, but not something that must be dosed on a daily basis.
Eat the foods you like when you like but be mindful of the overall amount of food you eat.
Pay less attention to health claims and more attention to eating whole foods.
Focusing on variety and mixing different foods, spices and flavors instead of finding optimal doses of specific foods for specific health outcomes is yet another change that must be made to have a sensible and healthy view of what food should be.
Food can be considered medicine when you’ve got a balanced view of it. When you can eat it without guilt and still maintain your health and fitness goals. And most of all, when you stop viewing it as a drug.
John
6 Responses to “Let Food be thy Medicine…not thy Drug”
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October 11th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Hi, John.
Reading your post I remembered a friend who’s always eating or drinking some new and expensive exotic seed or grain or tea or juice because they’re supposed to have some obscure antioxidant or property that will prevent all the cancers, make the blind see, the crippled walk, all that marketing…Only problem he’s really fat, high cholesterol and all. I told him “there are these guys, Barban and Pilon, maybe it would be good if you read a little…”. He never did.
The point is, his meals are carefully planned, or should I say, engineered, to have this and that miconutrient. It’s really sad, I never saw him really enjoying a meal.
John, a little off topic, but do you think being around 6-8% BF is too low? I ask you this because that’s where I’ve been for most of this year, and I’m having a lot of colds and sore throat. I’m not stressed, train regurlarly (not overtraining, I’m sure), my Adonis Index is 1.503, waist ok, needing to put more shoulders. If the problem isn’t in the BF level, maybe I should eat a little more carefully, but trying not to go mad like my friend…
Thanks!
October 12th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Wow! I never thought about food like that before. But like you said food isn’t a problem if you look at it the right way.
“Eat the foods you like when you like but be mindful of the overall amount of food you eat.
Pay less attention to health claims and more attention to eating whole foods.
Focusing on variety and mixing different foods, spices and flavors instead of finding optimal doses of specific foods for specific health outcomes is yet another change that must be made to have a sensible and healthy view of what food should be.”
Simple plan that can become a problem if we get away from what’s really important.
October 24th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
[...] and that is probably why the Venus Index caught her eye. She wanted to be fit and attractive, healthy and increase her confidence from appearance, so after reading about Venus Index, she found out that [...]
October 24th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
i used to let nutrients guide my eating choices … but after having great success with fat loss on AGD (better than any other diet) and moving into maintenance … have actually MAINTAINED (unlike after other diets when i quickly gained it all back) … i am slowly letting go of ‘nutrient guilt.’ johh, you have talked about ‘protein guilt’ but as someone probably recovering from some degree of orthorexia, i have ‘nutrient guilt.’i am getting better able to identify foods i really enjoy and that also satisfy me, and find that as i do so my eating is very balanced–but boy, that ‘nutrient guilt’ sneaks in … just so many years of looking at food as something other than food: good, bad, right, wrong …
November 14th, 2011 at 9:35 am
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March 5th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
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