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‘Let food be thy medicine & thy medicine be food’

  • Spence Cooper
  • June 30, 2009
An image of Hippocrates on the floor of the As...
Hippocrates

Alice Park with Time refers us to the Greek healer Hippocrates, the medical practitioner who is regarded as the father of medicine, and author of the Hippocratic oath. It was Hippocrates who said, “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.”

Park says doctors now believe he may have been right — doctors who never take even one class related to nutrition during medical school. Nutritionists have known Hippocrates was right for years. In study after study — many of them posted here at FriendsEat — fruits and vegetables have been linked to the prevention (and sometimes a possible contributing cure) of major illnesses.

“There is an overwhelmingly strong database of studies suggesting that the quality of calories we eat has a huge impact on our well-being and our risk of chronic disease and longevity,” says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Park directs the reader to a “groundbreaking 2002 study, [where] researchers found that people at risk of diabetes could delay or in some cases even prevent the disease from developing by eating fewer calories, getting them from the right kinds of foods and exercising more than two hours a week. Even more intriguing, the study revealed that people who were genetically predisposed to diabetes benefited most. In essence, diet and other lifestyle factors altered their genetic destiny”.

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