Polunin - Healing Foods

About the Authors

Susan Curtis has practiced as a homoeopath and naturopath since the mid-1980s and is the Director for Natural Health for Neals Yard Remedies. She is the author of several books, including Essential Oils, and co-author of Natural Healing for Women. Susan has two grown-up children and is passionate about helping people to eat well and live a more natural and healthy lifestyle.

Pat Thomas is a journalist, campaigner, broadcaster, and passionate cook. She is the author of several books on health and environment, and has worked with leading campaign organizations to outline sensible strategies for healthy and sustainable eating. She is a former editor of The Ecologist magazine and was the director of Paul McCartneys Meat Free Monday campaign in the UK. She currently sits on the Council of Trustees of the Soil Associationthe UKs premier organic certification body and is the editor of Neals Yard Remedies natural health website, NYR Natural News.

Dragana Vilinac , medical herbalist, comes from a family with a long lineage of traditional herbalists. Her lifes purpose is the exploration of the healing dynamics between plants, the planet, and people, and educating others in the subject. She has worked in the field of western, Chinese, and traditional Tibetan (Bhutanese) medicines since the 1980s, and has been a consultant on international development projects related to herbal medicines in Europe and Asia. She has co-authored books with the theme of plants as food and medicine. Dragana is the Chief Herbalist for Neals Yard Remedies.

KEY TO ICONS

These icons are used throughout to signpost you to dietary benefits for different health areas.

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Healing
Foods

Eat your way to a healthier life

Introduction

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

Hippocrates

The food we eat has an overreaching effect on our health and well-being, whether we are conscious of it or not. becoming more aware of YOUR DIET AND THE healing properties of food WILL HELP YOU to make necessary adjustments to meet the needs of your bodyand it will do an enormous amount to maintain and improve your health.

The Protective Power Of Food

Nutritional science has shed much light on the importance of whole food: we now understand that nutrients in our food work synergistically to promote healthand that processed food, denuded of many of its intrinsic nutrients, can promote disease. We also know of 50 or so essential vitamins, amino acids, minerals, and essential fatty acids that we need to get on a regular basis from our diet, and more than 1,200 phytonutrients found in fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, and animal products.

a rainbow of phytonutrients

Phytonutrients are the bioactive compounds in plants (phyto means plant) that supply their color and flavor. Although not essential to life in the way that vitamins and minerals are, they support health in a variety of ways. Antioxidants, for example, protect the body from free radicals, the unstable molecules that are produced through metabolism of and exposure to pollution, and which cause disease by damaging vital tissues and organs.

Antioxidants by color

Different Dietary Patterns

While we would not advocate a rigid approach to a particular diet, there are things that can be gained and adopted from traditional diets. Humans are very adaptable and it is interesting to see the ways in which different cultures have adjusted their diets to remain healthy in widely different environments.

Traditional Diets

inuit

The Inuit people of the Arctic have traditionally had very little access to cereals or fresh fruit and vegetables, but the manner in which they hunt and eat their mostly fish- and meat-based diet meets their nutritional needs. For example, vitamins and minerals that are derived from plant sources in other areas of the world are also present in most Inuit diets: vitamins A and D are present in the oils and livers of coldwater fishes and mammals, for instance, while vitamin C is obtained through sources such as caribou liver, kelp , whale skin , and seal offal. Because these foods are typically eaten raw or frozen, the vitamin C they containwhich would be destroyed by cookingis instead preserved.