Food IS medicine

Hippocrates said, "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food." It seems as though we've lost sight of that very wise piece of advice. As a society we feed ourselves foods that are easy for on-the-go eating. These foods, in the name of convenience, have been stripped of their nutritional value and have had some very unhealthy additives included. It's no wonder we find ourselves in such a poor state of affairs. We're not taking our medicines!

Here are a few things that you can do to improve your health, not through medications, but through your food!

• Keep a food diary for one week. Be honest. Don't change your diet to make it look better on paper. This is meant to make you aware of what you're eating, not beat you up about it! Feel no guilt about the way you have eaten in the past, get excited about the changes you're going to make that are going to positively affect your health!
• Add one serving of fruit or vegetable a day. Yep, that's it! We're not talking making HUGE changes here. Baby steps! Add a banana to your morning cereal. Or Take an apple to lunch. Take a second serving of vegetables at dinner, or add a second type of vegetable. Do this consistently for two weeks, then add another serving.
  
• Stop consistently eating something that doesn't lead you toward health. For example: Greatly decrease the number of sodas you drink per day, or discontinue them completely. You can take this in baby steps as well. If you drink 5 sodas per day, decrease to 4 for two weeks, then decrease to 3 for two more weeks, etc. I'm not saying that you can't ever have the food or drink ever again. What I'm saying is, save it as a treat. All of a sudden this food that you ate everyday becomes the most luxurious treat you've ever consumed!

In Chinese medicine, every food has healing properties to it, much like herbs, only milder. Some are great for improving digestion (oats, corn, millet, rice), some are helpful with nausea (lychee, pomelo, orange), some are great at clearing a phlegmy cough (pear, eggplant).

If we all started to think of our kitchens as our pharmacies and only stocked the cupboards with "medicines" that will lead us toward health, just think how our lives could change for the better!

It's what the doctor ordered!