ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In todays society, everyone seems to know that a healthy diet is key to maintaining good health, whether we choose to do it or not. But a connection that seems more difficult for people to make is that food is actually medicine. That is, your food is your medicine if it enhances your health; but it can actually be a poison if we consume things that destroy the healthy functioning of the mind and body.

The thinking around food and medicine seems to be caught up in the notion that medicine can cure you in a short time. We are accustomed as a society to alleviating uncomfortable symptoms with a pill, so the medical profession has become a pill-pushing mill, bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. It has produced a system in which the connection between diet and health are paid mere lip service, while the industrys economics center on hawking an ever-expanding menu of new drugs promising to cure whatever ails us.

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This system of drug-based medicine is also deeply ingrained in the insurance system, which pays for drugs to supposedly cure problems, but very rarely finances the much cheaper alternative promoting fresh healthy foods that would probably prevent most of the prevalent chronic diseases that plague the population.

Lets not even start with the FDA a labyrinthine bureaucracy that tries to regulate the distribution of foods and pharmaceuticals to the consumer. One cannot overstate the corrupting influence of corporate food producers and big pharmaceutical companies over how the FDA inspects, regulates and analyzes the food we consume. One look at the shelves in any major supermarket is all the proof you need to know that when it comes to your health, the FDA is often part of the problem.

We have to get back to square one. The father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, was credited with the saying, let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food. But a point of clarification is needed here. What passes as food these days processed and packaged products filled with preservatives and artificial ingredients is not what Hippocrates envisioned when he was talking about food. A growing number of studies in recent years should put to rest the notion that artificial sweeteners and fats have any place in a healthy diet. And yet the standard American diet is filled with so many of them aspartame, trans-fats, modified sodium, concentrated sugars that the American palate can scarce recognize, much less appreciate what real food tastes like any more.

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If you have any doubt whatsoever that food can be a drug, take a trip down to your local strip mall and look some of the stuff that passes as food: cheese-stuffed Doritos, a sandwich made of fried chicken and bacon, a supersized cherry soda, a pepperoni pizza with a crust made of chicken parts. If it werent for the genius marketing around these products, if people know these products by their ingredients, the very thought of eating them would make most people nauseous.

A recent study by Israels the Weizmann Institute of Science showed that low-calorie sugar substitutes produced alarming changes in body chemistry, including glucose resistance, weight gain, and diminished organ function, even when consumed over a relatively short period of time. These substances are prevalent in many supposedly health-oriented diet products, including soft drinks, cereals and desserts. The Weizmann Institute study also found that natural sugars found in fresh fruits and vegetables produced no such effects, even in large quantities.

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ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS: Food is medicine