A restaurant opened up in Wichita, Kansas, called "The Taste of Health". It uses Hippocrates quote, "Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food," as a tag-line for their new age of dinning. The Taste of Health is also attached to The Center For The Improvement Of Human Functioning International, a non-profit medical, research, and educational organization. The visitor to their online site has various ways to investigate their health and what the clinic or restaurant offers. For example, one way online that they promote their services is by having the guest check their thyroid function with the "Necker Cube" to the right. They are told to look at the "X" in the middle of the cube and watch the "Necker Cube" flip-flop, with the front becoming the back, and then the back becoming the front. They say that on average, a person sees the cube flip several times in a minute. Anyone whose flip-flop perception is considerably fast or slow are encouraged to ask a physician to check their thyroid function. This can be a tangible "ah, ha!" to the online visitor and they can continue on to fill out a doctor prescreaning questionnaire for the clinic.
As the online visitor explores their site more they will come to what are called "NutriCircles" as seen above. Then as one is looking at the healthy versus non-healthy version of food, they can see by the lines which is giving them better mineral nutrition versus the one that is nearly "dead food". As Victor Rocine had said that, "If we eat wrongly, No doctor can cure us; if we eat rightly, No doctor is needed." As more Americans are becoming aware that their food matters, what are the requirements for something to be classified as a food or a medicinal treatment? Can food be our healer? and how does the average person regulate what is needed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2Cmmlfp1c
This popular idea that the consumer is in control of their own health by eating well is highly visible. At the above link, Dr. Mark Hyman explains on his popular TV UltraWellness his course on "Food as Medicine: Powerful New Drug Could be at the End of Your Fork." He opens by saying that scientists have discovered this powerful drug that cures all chronic illnesses, which he then laughing tells the viewer that it is called "food". Later on in his recording, he mentions where he was told at one convention by chefs that food was all about the flavor and the taste, and not the health aspects. In Judith Farquhar's "Medicinal Meals" book, she also mentions flavor as a language and as an experience. However, the Chinese language for health comes in words such as ku (bitter) with various connotations. The most important being how it helps the body.
Quoting from a 1978 pharmacy textbook, Judith expands on the five flavors and their medicinal effects. For example, "Pungent has the function of spreading and disseminating, moving qi, moving blood, or nourishing with moisture... Sweet has the function of replenishing and supplementing, regulating the activity in the Middle Jiao, and moderating acuteness... Sour has the functions of contracting and constricting... Bitter has the function of draining and drying... Salty has the function of softening hardness, dispersing lumps, and draining downward..." (pg 65) Although these flavors may not please the palate like the chef's argued for, they do carry complex medicinal properties. "There's no doubt, I think, that for a medicine to do anything very complicated it must assault the sufferer with a strong and complex flavor."(pg 63) But medicinal foods and herbs are more than just flavor, in China they are also specific.
At the China Medical University Hospital a Chinese herbal pharmacy is situated in Mei-De medical center.
The Chinese herbal pharmacy is physically divided into pharmaceutical room, medicament room, decoction room, data management room and patient-awaiting room. It takes years of education for these doctors to learn the craft of customizing food and herbal medications. So how is it possible to for average person to know what to eat for optimal health? In Jean Retzinger's article she states, "the fact that the number of Americans actively engaged in and knowledgeable about food production has declined precipitously." (pg 151)
Assuming we as consumers know what to eat for health, we are also susceptible to advertisements that claim that their product will not only make us healthy, but beautiful too. This "gastro-porn" depends on imagery, innuendo, and our raised desire to eat healthy. What they don't tell you is how the healthy salad or herbal plants came about, if they used pesticides, or even retain any of their beneficial properties. For example, "More than 313,000 farm-workers in the United States may suffer pesticide-related illnesses annually." (pg 171) If it's not good for the farm worker, how is it good for the consumer? Are we Ivan Pavlovian's salivating dogs after gastro-porn, or informed consumers that aim to cure their chronic disease with the food at the end of the fork? Can optimal health really be achieved without the well educated doctor leading the patient through the herbal, pharmaceuticals, and nutrition? I like to think we, the lay people, can find the avenue to health through our diet. But we will need to be proactive in finding credible sources of information and food that is not contaminated or useless.
"Books on the medicinal uses of food and the alimentary uses of medicines are of several main types: traditionalist works that link medicinal foods to a long history of "life nurturance" (yang sheng) and preventive medicine, cuisine-oriented works that emphasize elegant presentation along with the special powers of ingredients combined in certain ways." (pg 51) These books seem like a great place to start one's personal journey to healthy or medicinal eating. How a consumer applies the knowledge is up to them. A goal I had placed for myself was to learn how to shop and prepare one healthy meal each week. I'm very busy between raising my daughter, being a full-time student, and running my home; so one a week was not too much for me to take on. However, after only a month I noticed the benefits of even just the addition of four new, easy, and healthy meals that I could prepare. The second place to start would be with an naturpathic doctor to help diagnose and treat any medical conditions that require immediate attention or that might be hard for the consumer to know what to eat. Regardless of the path chosen by the consumer, the facts remain that food can provide a medicinal effect and the average person can venture into self regulation and do so wisely with the help of resources: doctors, herbalists, nutritionists, and printed self study material. The more informed they become, the better their skill will be at eating for health and less for faulty "gastro-porn".
Bibliography
Farquhar, Judith. 2002. Appetites: food and sex in postsocialist China. Body, commodity, text. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
LeBesco, Kathleen, and Peter Naccarato. 2008. Edible ideologies: representing food and meaning. Albany: State University of New York Press.
"Welcome to The Taste of Health Restaurant." http://www.brightspot.org/toh/index.shtml
“Food as Medicine: Powerful New Drug Could be at the End of Your Fork.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2Cmmlfp1c
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