The Healing Nature of Food - Why Eating Blueberries isn’t Going to Heal You
What never ceases to intrigue me is both the healing nature of food, and the complete misunderstanding of it, and the amazing risks, schemes, and finances we are willing to expend in order to demand health. With more and more confusion, more mistrust with conventional practices and alternative practices alike, more bias, and less trust with who and what we should believe, we have developed an even weaker understanding of the healing power of food itself. Healing with food is FREE! What we put into our bodies INEVITABLY has to make a difference to our health or the lack thereof. Consuming appropriate, nutrient rich foods and eating them well HAS to therefore, make positive change one way or another. We search the internet for the magical foods that reduce blood pressure, make us skinny, cure diabetes. Infographics proclaim the benefits of eating blueberries and acai. For a time, we gobble them up and when they don’t produce instant benefits, we give up and go back to the Cheetos. Here is the thing: there are hundreds of foods that will assist the body’s healing that will reduce the symptoms of depression, or of chronic heart disease, or of skin conditions. HOWEVER, the FOOD is not a magic bullet. It’s not a medicine with a pathway of a targeted action, like a pharmaceutical is. A FOOD is the necessary FUEL for the body to do what it already knows to do. It’s already innately PROGRAMMED to do it. A diesel engine already KNOWS how to run and what to do, now all it needs is DIESEL FUEL. The “blueberry”, “acai juice”, or “magic secret food discovered in the heart of Africa” is simply the FUEL to allow the programming to happen. The problem is that we have the concept and believe that something on the OUTSIDE needs to come in and TAKE OVER to MAKE the body healthy. We JUST NEED TO GIVE IT THE FUEL IT NEEDS, and that includes the healthy variety of fresh foods, unadulterated, unprocessed or minimally processed, CONSISTENTLY EVERY DAY. Healing INEVITABLY has to happen when the body is allowed to do what it knows to do. This is why “eating blueberries to heal cancer” will never work, because you haven’t fully embraced or understand the idea of fueling a functioning system as a PRACTICE, a LIFESTYLE, not as an addition to an already poor diet and a poor relationship to the food that makes up that diet, which is what really needs to change. If you keep the idea that the blueberries are the “healer”, you’ve really only stayed consistent with the medical mentality that the “tablet” will heal your problem, rather than a complete understanding that it takes ALWAYS fueling the diesel engine with diesel EVERY TIME you fill up the tank, not just adding a cleaner every once in a while.