Oz - Food can fix it: the superfood switch to fight fat, defy ageing and eat your way to vibrant health

ALSO BY DR. MEHMET OZ

Healing from the Heart: A Leading Surgeon Combines Eastern and Western Traditions to Create the Medicine of the Future

ALSO BY DR. MEHMET OZ WITH DR. MICHAEL ROIZEN

YOU: The Owners Manual

YOU: Losing Weight

YOU: On a Diet

YOU: The Smart Patient

YOU: Stress Less

YOU: Staying Young

YOU: Being Beautiful

YOU: Having a Baby

YOU: Raising Your Child

YOU: The Owners Manual for Teens

YOU(r) Teen: Losing Weight at Any Age

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ISBN 978-1-78817-019-2 in print
ISBN 978-1-78817-034-5 in ePub format
ISBN 978-1-78817-035-2 in Kindle formats

To mums, who have always known that food can fix it

How food heals your body and energizes your life.

Right here, right now, I want you to stop what youre doing and think of the last thing you ate.

I dont care if it was healthy or unhealthy, homemade or plucked out of a vending machine, plain or smothered in cheese. Remember what it looked like and how it tasted?

Now think about this: Do you know what happened afterward?

Sure, you may understand in broad termssome of it exited your body, some might have trespassed on your belly, hips, or thighs. Beyond that, do you understand how food interacts with your biological universe, in all of its mystery and majesty?

Every ingredient in every bite of every meal you eat is a passenger on a ride through the magical kingdom that is made up of your organs, cells, tissues, and various vessels. And theyre not passive passengers who just ooh and ahh at the attractions (Cool! Look at that colon rolling!). These passengers participate in the way your body workshow you operate, how you feel, how you live.

Of all the personal choices you can make about your health, nothing holds greater influence than the food you eat. Yes, food can break you, but it also holds the power to fix your body, prevent some diseases, and reverse others. I wrote this book to help you harness that power and to share some of the lessons I have learned about food, eating, and life. Ill begin with my top five.

Food is medicine. In Italy, pharmacy is spelled farmacia, and there is a lot of truth embedded in how we read that word. Some of the worlds best cures are grown on our farms and available in our supermarkets, ready to go to work in your body if you know what to reach for and how to prepare it. The right food can even replace that daily pill (and all the annoying side effects that come with it).

Food is an eraser that can wipe away past lifestyle lapses and health mistakes.

Food is the extension cord that energizes and lengthens your life. Science is only now advanced enough to prove what our ancestors may have figured out with trial and error, and scores and scores of new studies annually are reinforcing the power of food on longevity.

Food is sacred and historically has brought people together in a unique way. When you can unite good eating with good feelings, you reap tremendous biological, spiritual, and emotional rewards.

Food can fix it, and I want to show you how.

In this book, you will find a mapa way forward that lets food improve your journey. It begins with my 21-Day Plan (along with 33 recipes, plus snacks), a chance to retrain your body and your taste buds so that you can start a lifelong commitment to eating welland loving every body-changing bite. Im going to give you the knowledge, the tools, and the strategies to help you heal or prevent the problems youre most concerned about, because food can fix so many health issues, big and small, from your weight to your heart to your ability to fight off a nasty cold.

I call this approach a superfood switch. Now, people throw around the term superfood a lot, sometimes implying that theres a single food with magical properties that can overhaul your health. No such food exists. I wouldnt even offer you a list of Top 20 Super-foods because a nutritious diet cannot be reduced that way. Instead, I will introduce you to an eating philosophy that emphasizes a range of healing whole foods, including hundreds of vegetables, fruits, sources of protein and fats, spices, herbs, teas, and more. Theyre all superfoods that work hard for your body, and when you embrace them, youll not only reap their benefits but also crowd the bad stuff right off your plate. Its not a buy-this label or an eat-this checklist, but a superfood way of life.

Throughout my personal and professional journey, I have seen food change people. In fact, food has changed me. Lets take a quick look back at my childhood and Ill explain how.

I n lots of kitchens, youll find some kind of junk drawer. You know the one Im talking aboutits filled with rubber bands, fourteen half-used tubes of ChapStick, some batteries, a recipe you tore out of a magazine, and various other random morsels.

When I was growing up, my mother kept a junk drawer. This one? Had nothing but sweets.