Let Food Be Your Medicine--Hippocrates, Father of Medicine

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ---Thomas Edison

The two major areas of prevention for disease are exercise and nutrition. Most of us know this already. It’s simple, but not always easy and knowing is not enough, for knowledge is only potential power and not actual power. The problem is that many of us are being inundated by advertisements and word of mouth that low-carb diets such as Atkins and other unhealthy diets are the way to go in order to lose weight and that supplements are necessary to maintain an optimal level of well being. Nothing could be further from the truth. The health issues that have erupted from the low-carb diets, as well as other fad diets on the market, are fortunately bringing that carb-counting roar to a whisper. The low-carb lunacy is fading as people realize that it isn’t worth compromising their well being in order to lose weight. Being overweight is unhealthy, but so is not getting enough important nutrients to properly fuel the body to fight off and prevent disease. The low carb diet has lasted longer than the others, because the health effects may not be evident for some time---possibly years. These diets try to convince us that we can eat some of our favorite foods, which are not always very healthy, and still lose weight. It was the perfect marketing approach to capture the attention of Americans wanting to lose weight, because it allowed them to choose from a wide selection of foods that collectively don’t provide much nutrition, but still taste good and many of us were already used to eating anyway. While every world health organization tells us to eat more whole foods such as fruits and veggies, the low-carb diet tells us not to. It is incredibly absurd, but how much of the American public bought into it with their money and their well being?

The “weight loss industry” has been cashing in billions of dollars a year since the 1980s, but yet more Americans are overweight than ever before. All of the fad diets that have come and gone have been nothing more than well-constructed marketing schemes designed to get you to dish out money for systems and plans that are at best short-term solutions to weight loss. A very large number of people wind up putting the weight back on, which is a testament to the ineffectiveness of those diet plans.

Most of these diets promote eating foods that are products of the packaged and processed food industry. It is this very industry that is the main cause of the American health crisis. The foods distributed by this industry are essentially lifeless and are pumped with corn sweeteners, which boost up the calories. Even all of the low-fat diets of the 80s weren’t effective with respect to weight loss, because the foods were pumped with corn sweeteners that are rich in calories. Even though the fat went down, the calories went up. This of course causes obesity, but because they are devoid of all the nutrients that the human body needs, this also causes malnutrition, which is a deadly combination. Despite all of this, many Americans continue to eat more of these high-calorie low-nutrient foods. One could argue that the packaged and processed food industry is simply giving the American public what it wants, but as Marion Nestle well-respected NYU nutrition professor and author of the book Food Politics has stated, “I don’t think we can talk about giving the public what the public wants without discussing the $33 Billion a year that is spent trying to promote that kind of want.” This was her response in a Peter Jennings ABC News report titled How To Get Fat Without Really Trying. She clearly stated what the packaged and processed food industry spends on advertising, which is actually over $33 Billion, in order to condition us to eat more and more of their products. It was actually back in the 1950s that advertisers discovered that if they can get their message across to a person just 9 times in a 30 day period, then that message will be stored in the brain and impact their behavior. This is especially true when it comes to the basic, but incredibly important, activity of eating. Our relationship to food and other things is largely being determined by advertisers. There is no need to wonder why we have a health crisis.

That Peter Jennings report also discusses how the government is at fault as well as the packaged and processed food industry. Government farm subsidies largely support the growth of corn, which is the principal ingredient in the American diet—not in the form of corn on the cob, but instead in the form of high calorie sweeteners. Corn is the main ingredient in the processing of foods. The government created these farm subsidy programs during the Great Depression so that farms wouldn’t go bankrupt, but the policies were never updated. This has resulted in a massive disconnect between farm subsidies, which fuel the packaged and processed food industry, and public health and nutrition. The government sanctioned food pyramid, which is supposed to be the healthy food map for Americans, doesn’t even come close to reflecting where government money actually goes. The top of the pyramid, which represents the foods that we are supposed to eat the least of, are actually getting the most money. If Americans wanted to eat a healthier diet, farmers would have to plant about twice as many acres of fruits and vegetables. But of course, the government would have to subsidize that much planting of these whole foods. Considering what the campaign contributions are like from agricultural corporations to members of Congress, it is highly unlikely that this is going to happen any time in the near future. This will result in the current health crisis becoming a national tragedy.

Let’s take stock of the current crisis situation. Noted Neuromuscular Therapist, sports conditioning coach, Holistic Health Practitioner and fitness professional educator Paul Chek produced a nine-hour CD/Workbook course titled “You Are What You Eat!” In it he states,

Human beings, armed with some 10,000 taste buds, are thought to have a fairly comprehensive sense of taste. While you would think that we would be capable of using this arsenal of taste buds to sniff-out foods of superior nutritional
quality to eat, it would appear that chemical science has put up an effective smoke screen. Approximately 50% of the American population has eaten themselves into some degree of obesity and semi-starvation by consuming nutritionally inadequate foods! If that’s not enough, the US spends more money on health care than any other nation with each person averaging over $4,000 per year in medical expenses. Yet the US ranks last for life expectancy among all industrialized nations, is far from being the healthiest nation. This is not hard to believe when you consider that in the year 2000, retail pharmacies in the US filled 3 billion prescriptions - that’s hardly what I would consider a healthy nation! Then when you take into account that there were 281 million people living in the US in 2000, with 3 billion prescriptions being filled, that’s almost 11 prescriptions per person. This means, for every person who doesn’t buy a prescription, there is someone else getting 22 filled each year!

As the most expensive medical system in the world, ours may be the best when it comes to treating acute surgical emergencies, but it is the worst at treating chronic illness. The poor performance of the US health care industry was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study, which ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries. Our health system is the most expensive with its use of technology, but it is among the least effective. The most effective system in the world, which also uses high-tech diagnostic equipment, is Japan’s, but the Japanese rank highest in health according to this study. The Japanese are known for having the longest life spans on the planet. Eating raw foods, including good amounts of fish, and drinking green tea, are most certainly contributing factors.

So what kind of solutions are we coming up with here in the United States?

The New Pill and Potion Pushers
So on one end we have this health crisis brought about by incredibly poor nutrition (as well as a sedentary lifestyle), which often times increases toxicity as well, and at the other end we have the medical and pharmaceutical industries providing incredibly poor treatment of the resulting chronic diseases. With this obvious connection between poor nutrition, disease and the medical community’s poor response, we then have the supplement industry attempting to push pills and potions onto us with the promise of burning fat, plugging in the wholes in our nutritional gaps, and extending our lives, as well as shielding us from environmental toxicity by way of their super antioxidants. The price tag of some of these “solutions” is significantly high, which means that a considerable portion of the US population will be out-priced, except of course for many of the baby boomers who drive our economy and for whom many of these supplements were created for anyway. The justification for supplements is based on a great deal of paid for pseudo-science that is backed by a marketing machine, which has resulted in over 125 million Americans supplementing. This number will increase dramatically in the coming years as it has been predicted by economist Paul Zane Pilzer that the “wellness industry” will exceed $1 Trillion dollars in less than a decade. You have to wonder how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy this is as many people and companies are scrambling to get a piece of that trillion dollar “wellness” pie, because it was predicted by an economist, who actually advised two former presidents, but who has no “wellness” background himself. It is largely about the economics and how those who follow his work can benefit from this increasing “wellness” pie. His influence from this economic work can actually be one of the catalysts causing this next trillion dollar industry, hence the self-fulfilling prophecy.

We have more and more medical professionals already writing books on nutrition, many of which advocate supplements. Meanwhile these doctors were not trained in nutrition, since that is not exactly an extensive part of the curriculum in medical school. Medical professionals are largely trained in drugs treatments, many of which come in the same form as supplements, but it seems that many people have not made that obvious connection. Nevertheless, much of the American public will listen to the doctors, because people generally believe that doctors know best regarding all matters of health and well being. If this were true, we wouldn’t have a health crisis on our hands with medical professionals often prescribing drugs that treat only symptoms and at times result in other health issues, some times even death. Not to mention that the medical community is actually the third largest killer in America. That’s right! Number one being heart disease and number two being cancer. Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health authored a landmark article titled “Is US health really the best in the world?” It was published on July 26, 2000 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). According to Dr. Starfield approximately 250,000 people die every year in the “health” care system due to infections in hospitals (80,000), adverse reactions to drugs (106,000), medication errors in hospitals (7,000), unnecessary surgeries (12,000), and other errors in hospitals that total 20,000. This is not meant to be a brief dose of doctor bashing, but rather a statement about the medical community’s obvious failure in dealing with the American health crisis, since as an industry they have unfortunately become more a part of the problem than a part of the solution, due to their influence and ubiquity. I don’t want to over generalize here and condemn the entire medical profession for the paradigm that is taught to them and for which most in that field accept. If you do some searching, you can certainly find some more holistically minded medical professionals that take a rigorously scientific approach to the prevention and treatment of disease. They do much more than just prescribe pills and potions and they are typically part of a professional holistic network of some sort. This is where word of mouth via referrals can really help.

There is still however this growing relationship between doctors and the supplement industry. As there is growing awareness of the dangers of drugs (recall the number of deaths a year above) and of alternative therapies that Americans are spending an increasing amount on every year, it seems that there are doctors also stepping up to cash in and get a piece of that trillion dollar “wellness” pie of which the supplement industry is a part of. With all of this “expert” medical backing and all of the different sources the market provides for purchasing supplements, more and more people are being left confused and frustrated over which supplement products to choose for their “health.” It will become increasingly complex as an ever growing number of products are rushed to the market, many of them with very similar or identical ingredients, but each boasting that theirs is the best, or better yet, that theirs provides “total wellness”, as if you are not going to need anything else other than their product. The market is already saturated with many different product lines, which is easily evidenced by stepping into a GNC, Vitamin Shop or “Health Food” store. (It’s interesting how some of these “Health Food” stores are loaded with pills and potions as if those products are food, or even derived from food. That hypocrisy was part of the motivation behind the founding of Whole Foods Market as a supermarket that would actually focus on the sale of organic food and not pills and potions.)

It is important to pay attention to the use of language in the supplement industry. Terms like “natural” are being thrown around a great deal with little or no basis in fact. Do you really believe that anything in pill form is truly natural? I sincerely doubt that we are ever going to find a tree in the middle of a South American rain forest bearing pills instead of fruits, grains, veggies or herbs. A leaf of spinach has over 12,000 ingredients. Do you know how many of these ingredients science has identified and named? Only 141 and every time that a new ingredient from a whole food is named the supplement industry hurries to isolate it and put it out in pill or potion form. Consider Lycopene. Instead of eating tomatoes, say one a day, which the supplement industry would make no money on, they sell us pills containing this nutrient, which is supposed to be heart healthy. Never mind the fact that this nutrient was designed to work synergistically with all of the other nutrients found in a tomato, some which still haven’t been named either, because we have no idea what they do. David Klurfeld, national program leader for human nutrition at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service says, "People think that we can pull out the fiber, pull out the antioxidants. But research does not back that up. Study after study says you gain the most benefit from whole foods." The vitamin C that is found in an orange is in the complex and integral form that is needed by your body. The supplement version is simply a chemical copy of ascorbic acid. The authentically natural form of ascorbic acid is only to be found in food. The only thing you will find in a pill or potion is synthetic. In short, a pile of pills or cups full of potions a day are not going to offer you the same benefit as a healthy diet. There is plenty of research that demonstrates this.

Nevertheless, a new vocabulary will be continually created to help discuss this supplement phenomenon and to mentally program us of all of its supposed benefits. Certain key people will redefine terms we have taken for granted and create new ones like “anti-aging”, “nutracuetical” (Notice the resemblance to pharmaceutical. An obvious attempt to legitimize it) , and even “wellness”, as part of their marketing strategy and a new era in “health” will be well underway.

The ancient saying from Hippocrates the father of medicine is “Let Food Be Your Medicine” and not “Let Supplements Be Your Medicine.” Many Americans are already beginning to view their supplements as a justification for their poor diets. That is what happens when you introduce a magic, or supposedly powerful, pill into the market.

The issue here is lifestyle. The human body has essentially been the same for 40,000 years and since we have altered the way we treat food, physical activity and our own bodies, we have been increasingly becoming ill. All sorts of diseases have come into being in the last century, because of our very different lifestyles, which are obviously unhealthy. Scores of industrial toxins that didn’t exist 75 years ago are making their way into our bodies thanks to everyday products such as perfume, deodorant, hair spray, cosmetics, food wrap, etc. Many of these products have cancer causing agents and because of our poor lifestyle choices our bodies aren’t as resilient as they once were. Instead of the human body (and mind) being in a state of ease, for many Americans they are in a state of dis-ease. With all of the physical diseases we also have a host of mental and emotional illnesses, many of which can also be attributed to our unhealthy lifestyles. Consider ADD and ADHD in children. Can you really expect children, or adults for that matter, to be focused if you fill them with chemically processed/low nutrient junk foods, cut down or remove physical activity and remove artistic and creative programs from the schools? Mentally, emotionally and physically they will be seriously unbalanced and we have evidence of this every single day in our school system.

With little physical activity and incredibly poor nutrition we are obviously in need of a profound transformation in lifestyle. Taking a pill or drinking a chemically processed drink is not a lifestyle change, yet some of our popular health sciences are telling us that we would benefit from these new “wellness” products being introduced on the market today. This is not good science, but instead paid for science. The same goes for all of these impractical exercise machines that are on the market. Everyone has an opinion, but some of us have sound science and personal strength of character behind our opinions. It’s a matter of what the developers and salespeople of products are committed to. Some of us are committed to well-being while others are committed to cashing in on wellness.

It really has to do with branding and marketing. You can easily brand packaged/processed foods and supplements, but you can’t so easily brand foods that are grown from the earth. How do you brand spinach? So in order to create a profitable business with convenient consumable products, an illusion is created, branded, and marketed to the American public. One makes us acutely and chronically sick (processed foods) while the other (supplements) is coming to the rescue as nothing more than a band aid solution to a gaping wound we call the American health crisis.

The same situation occurs with exercises. How do you brand a push up, a squat, a lunge or a dumbbell press? You can’t, but you can certainly design a machine that will not build any functional strength, or create any real carry over effect to your activities of daily living, and brand it so that you now have something to market and profit off of. The machine will be marketed as a device that builds muscle and strength. It may very well build some muscle (not the important neutralizers and stabilizers of the body that protect joints however), but it is highly unlikely that it will build the kind of strength that is useful in the world where stability coupled strength is what is necessary. You may look better, but you will certainly not move better and the degree to which you feel better will be very limited when compared to more functional forms of exercise.

The benefits of branded food products, supplements and exercise machines are all poorly constructed myths that largely serve to create wealth for some clever individuals, some of whom are largely concerned with cashing in on wellness and not really helping a society to become well. There is a difference between being committed to well being, which results in you making money from that, and being committed to cashing in on the wellness revolution. The former requires that you have an unwavering commitment to the acquisition and implementation of knowledge in the area of what makes people well. The latter simply requires that you sell as many products as possible that have been categorized as “wellness” products. A commitment to well being can be the cause of making money and I assert that this focus and commitment causes one to earn money with a higher degree of integrity, honesty and responsibility than those who focus and commit themselves to simply making money from wellness. It’s an interesting cause and effect relationship. Spreading authentic well being can be the cause where earning money, even creating wealth, is the effect. But can we say the same thing going in the opposite direction? Can we say that focusing on making money will be the cause of a powerful well being solution to the American health crisis? I sincerely doubt it!

Whole Foods
So let’s consider this approach of food a bit. Whole foods are foods that grow from the earth. We have seen an explosion in this area as well with more Americans buying organic produce and the “Whole Foods” supermarket chain opening up more branches all over the country. In each location where they open, a great deal of traffic is driven there by the market and real estate investors in the area love it. People on the look out for business opportunities that make a difference in people’s lives are looking in this direction. They see how powerful an organic whole food approach is to well being, thereby making it a very solid solution to the American health crisis.

Your body was designed to absorb this kind of nutrition. With a few exceptions around the world such as some Eskimos, human beings are designed to eat a largely whole food diet---some of us more than others. It’s a matter of your ancestral history, but for the most part our genetic propensity is toward eating foods that grow from the earth. We are of the earth, so it only makes sense that we eat food of the earth as well. To think that this kind of nutrition can be found in a pill or processed drink of some sort will lead to sub-optimal levels of well being at best, but it will most likely result in much worse. As with exercise, it is best to treat the body nutritionally in the way that it was intended by nature, for the body itself is a product of nature. There is no improving upon that which has adapted to the biosphere we live in. As powerful as the human mind can be it is not a vehicle for the alteration of the planet and its natural products. Because of the mind’s power, a great deal of intellectual arrogance has emerged, with rather destructive consequences. Science has not been able to duplicate the adaptation process of the human body, which is why we were in much better shape at the time of Hippocrates (the father of medicine) than we are now. We are in the worst physical and emotional condition of our evolutionary existence. Federal agencies have stated that obesity is currently the most pressing health issue in the country. Our young people are certainly not immune to it. Consider the impact this has had on our children and how we may already be condemning them to a life time of illness, which is evidenced in the illnesses afflicting them that used to only afflict adults.

Detoxification
Disease has been very simply defined by some as tubes with obstructions. The body is made up of many miles of tubes and when tubes become blocked in some way, we have disease (dis-ease). It’s really that simple. Keeping those tubes clear so that the intended substance such as blood and oxygen can pass through is of vital importance to the well being of any individual. Those tubes carry crucial life ingredients. The clearing of those tubes will determine your level of health and the quality of what flows through those tubes is determined by what goes into your body through your mouth. Cleansing the body of toxins and substances that cause blockages will allow the body’s systems to function at optimum. Eating organic whole foods is a very important path toward cleansing the body of toxins. Consider these:

7 Principles of Well Being
1. Fresh Air & Sunshine
2. Water
3. Whole Foods
4. Walking
5. Loving Relationships
6. Passion
7. A Good Night’s Sleep

Finally A Sound Nutritional Answer
After weighing all of the above reasons Engaged Fitness decided to team up with a company called The Wholefood Farmacy. This company was founded as genuine response to the American health crisis and offers conveniently packaged organic whole foods that are shipped directly to people’s homes and require no preparation. There are three major reasons or excuses people have for not eating healthier organic foods. 1) It is too expensive, 2) it is not accessible, because there are no stores in their area, and 3) they are too busy to prepare food in their homes. All three of those reasons have been addressed at the Wholefood Farmacy. The foods are more affordable than what you would normally find in an organic health food store, especially if you look at all of the ingredients of these foods. Since it is shipped directly to your home accessibility is not a problem and lastly the food is already made using certain recipes so no preparation is required. It’s a Win Win! You get to better balance out your finances, time and healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, all of the foods have an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee.

We carry 7 different whole food shakes for the 7 bodily systems, chopped fruits with or without honey granola, chopped vegetables with or without spices, a special and delicious product called PhiPlus with 76 organic ingredients, a 13 day food program called the Tri-Decathlon, 3 different corn products and an all natural body care line for a completely organic life style.

The Inner 13K
The Tri-Decathlon is an inner 13K down the alimentary canal that helps to flush out any blockages in your tubes, thus helping to prevent, and in many cases, heal disease. It is 13 days of nothing but pure organic whole foods, which causes you to return a state of homeostasis or equilibrium.

There are four Tri-Decathlon packages, which range from $13 to $17/day.

Here are the instructions to the Tri-Decathlon: You eat when you are hungry! That’s it! Unlike other diets that have a very structured eating regimen, here we are dealing with organic whole foods, which your body will recognize immediately. That means that you finally get to listen to your body and not deprive it of anything, as is the common practice in dieting. There is no suffering with this program, because the body knows best what it needs. It needs very little conscious effort from you other than to consciously choose to eat healthy foods. Over just a number of days your body will begin to desire healthier foods and you will become more aware of toxicity around you in foods.

AND THERE ARE NO WARNING LABELS ON THIS PRESCRIPTION!

Beginning The Journey
Consider doing part, or all, of your food shopping through The Wholefood Farmacy. Allow us to become your online supermarket. We also carry all natural body care products such as soaps, tooth paste, skin creams, lip balm, deodorant and coconut oil, as well as nutritional education programs on the current health crisis and our efforts to do something about it. One of these programs includes an ABC News Peter Jennings report titled “How To Get Fat Without Really Trying.” It’s a very powerful and compelling piece of investigative journalism, which you can actually watch at my Wholefood Farmacy web site.

For a complete list of whole food products and to watch the Peter Jennings report, go to www.engaged.wholefoodfarmacy.com.

You can browse through our online catalogue and make purchases. The contact information is the same on this fitness site as the nutritional product site. You can contact for recommendations and any questions you may have on the products. All the products have an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee.

Nature’s Perfect Whole Food
Complete Nutrition Everyday
Increased Energy
Easy Weight Control
Mental Clarity
Decreased Appetite/Cravings
Convenient Meals/Snacks
All Natural/Non Toxic Body Care
Health Educational Materials

Authentic Nutrition

Let Food Be Your Medicine--Hippocrates, Father of Medicine