Food Can Be Medicinal & Better For The Planet?

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You may have noticed that doctors sometimes don’t seem to know much nutrition and how food choices can prevent disease and support healing.

This ‘doctor disconnect’ may be because for many years, if not decades, medical schools have not provided much or any instruction about nutrition to their medical students.

PBS Newshour recently published a short video about the field of culinary medicine in which medical students are shown learning about healthier food choices and cooking.

In the short video, it appears most of the foods they are learning about and cooking with are plants and fresh ones. Processed and ultra-processed foods such as cereal, crackers, chips, dips, canned and jarred sauces, frozen pizzas, frozen lasagna, frozen tacos, cookies, cupcakes, Wonder Bread, bacon, meat jerky, and so on are typically full or nearly full of sugar, salt, and fat. They are generally unhealthy and sometimes are deliberately manufactured by large food corporations to be habit forming so the corporations have a better chance to make money and stay in business.

Millions of Americans are overweight and being overweight is linked with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, glaucoma, and various other health conditions. 

Estimates of the number of Americans who are overweight might be understating the situation. “We already thought we had an obesity epidemic, but this is astounding,” said co-first author Lindsay Fourman, a Mass General endocrinologist and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “With potentially 70 percent of the adult population now considered to have excess fat, we need to better understand what treatment approaches to prioritize.”

CleanTechnica is a sustainability news website and on the surface is not about healthy food. However, agriculture and food supply chains do impact climate change and the environment. They also intersect with human health. Switching to mostly plant-based diets could be quite beneficial.

“Adoption of such a diet worldwide would prevent about 15 million early deaths every year while greatly reducing rates of chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative conditions.”

“Food systems are a major contributor to many of the crises we face today, and at the same time, the key to solving them,” said Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, commission co-chair and director for nutrition, health and food security at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

“The evidence laid out in our report is clear: the world must act boldly and equitably to ensure sustainable improvements. The choices we make today will determine the health of people and the planet for generations.”

Animal foods are some of the worst for climate change; they are:

Here is some supporting information about potential health benefits from plant foods.