Food as medicine is not a new thought, in fact Hippocrates the father of modern medicine is credited with saying "let food be your medicine and medicine be your food".

Now was he just saying this because they were no pharmaceutical companies around at the time or did he have a point that we would do well to re-engage with today.

Definition of medicine

“A preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease.”

The role of food in our bodies

The science of biology teaches us that to be alive is to be in a constant process of dynamic healing as the 37.2 trillion cells in your body are constantly breaking down and being re-created.

The latest estimate is that we re-generate 96 million cells a minute (some estimates are much higher).

The fuel for this process of dynamic healing is food, both macronutrients in the form of fats, carbohydrates and protein, and micronutrients in the form of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals or plant chemicals.

Every second of every minute of every hour that we are alive old cells are dying and new ones are being made and the nature of the environment this happens in is critical for the treatment and prevention of disease.

A clean environment

Your body uses food to create the perfect environment for new cells to be made, creating compounds that clean up damaged cells (free radicals) and toxins like mercury and other heavy metals.

For example your body uses natural folate, vitamin B12 and the mineral selenium that you get from your food to produce antioxidants. (They help clean up the free radicals)

Food is central to your bodies defence system in fending off bacteria and viruses that will ‘dirty’ your ‘environment’ using vitamins like B6, vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin E and vitamin A for your immune system health.

Food as medicine

Therefore if food is both the fuel for the constant healing your body requires to be alive and provides the ‘clean’ environment for your cells to re-generate - isn’t that ‘a preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease?’

What food do you need?

To really ensure that you have all the nutrients ‘medicine’ needed to keep you healthy, you need to keep a food diary that tracks your intake of all vital macro and micronutrients and matches this to your recommended daily amounts (RDAs).

Checkyourfood’s food diary does all of these things and gives you a report in a simple to understand traffic lights system, making it really easy to see what food you’re missing out on.

You can use it for free here.