Psyche and soma, mind and body— mirrors. Mind, by intending, operates on matter, method not known. Matter disappears into a glimmer of subatomic ghosts.... If final answers are not forthcoming, we can take more interest in our own experiences and ideas. Our questions can be reframed in terms of esthetics and practicality. Not “Is it true?” but “Does it fit?” Not “What is real?” but “Does it work?” —Marilyn Ferguson Brain/Mind Bulletin “[AN] IMPORTANT, WELL-THOUGHT-OUT BOOK.” — Bon Appetit “I recommend it to my patients.... It’s an excellent book to help people understand the relationship between what they eat and how they feel.” —Stephen Rechtstaffen, M.D. Director, Omega Institute for Holistic Studies “Coming from a holistic point of view, [ Food and Healing ] urges us to make conscious choices in our diets based on not just physical, but philosophical, emotional, and even spiritual perspectives.” — Free Spirit “Food and Healing establishes the scientific, philosophical, ethical, nutritional, emotional, psychological, sensual, and cross-cultural foundations on which a vibrant state of health can build.” — Organica “Food and Healing is like a breath of fresh air.... Nutritionally speaking, this book can be a powerful catalyst to our letting go to the wisdom of life.” — The Chiropractic and Whole Health Center “This is a work of careful research and scholarship.... Food and Healing is a compendium of concepts, practical recommendations, and personal sharing ... a bold as well as valuable undertaking. Readers will appreciate [Colbin’s] broad view and the gentleness and clarity of thought behind the words.” — Macromuse Magazine “Must reading ... A nice summation of a lot of current trends, ancient philosophy, and modern scientific breakthroughs on the health benefits of right eating.” — Santa Cruz Sentinel “Highly recommended.” — Brain Mind Bulletin Contents Cover Epigraph Title Page Copyright Foreword by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition Introduction: The Power of Food Part One: DYNAMICS OF LIVING SYSTEMS ONE: HEALTH TODAY How Are We? How Effective Are Our Remedies? What Are the Limitations of Modern Medicine? TWO: A NEW WORLD VIEW Holism Living Systems Energy Fields The Life Force in Foods Whole Food and Fragmented Food The Effects of Food Temperature The Effects of Food Preservation Nutrients in Proportion THREE: FOOD AND THE LAW OF OPPOSITES A Matter of Balance Quantity and Quality: A Lot and a Little Expansive and Contractive Acid and Alkaline Warming and Cooling Buildup and Breakdown Five-Phase Theory Part Two: FOOD FOUR: MODERN DIETS—A REEVALUATION The Standard American Diet The Recommended American Diet The Pritikin Diet High-Protein Diets Low-Calorie Diets The Fortified Natural-Foods Diet A Commentary on Nutritional Supplements The Vegetarian Diet The Question of Vitamin B 12 Macrobiotics FIVE: THE HEALTH-SUPPORTIVE WHOLE-FOODS EATING STYLE Eating Out: How to Manage For the Dietician and the Health Professional: Nutrition in Numbers SIX: THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT FOODS Milk and Dairy Products The Question of Calcium Meat Fish and Fowl Eggs Grain Beans Roots Leaves Fruits Nightshades Sea Vegetables Herbs and Spices Single-Nutrient Foodstuffs: Crystals and Fats Salt Sugar Fats and Oils SEVEN: THE EFFECTS OF FOOD PREPARATION Cooking Fermenting EIGHT: CHANGING THE WAY WE EAT How Do You Feel? When to Change Your Diet How to Change Your Diet Tuning in to Your Body Signals How Fast? Which Way? NINE: WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A CHANGE IN DIET Withdrawal Symptoms How Long, Oh, How Long? Can Health Food Make Us Sick? TEN: CRAVINGS AND BINGES: WHAT DO THEY MEAN? Addiction/Allergy Discharge Imbalance of Systems Part Three: HEALING ELEVEN: HEALTH AND ILLNESS: NEW DEFINITIONS What Is Health? What Is Illness? TWELVE: FOOD AS MEDICINE Can Food Be Medicine? The Law of Remedies Home Remedies External Remedies Fasting How to Fast How Will It Feel? Breaking the Fast Basic Rules of Successful Fasting Conditions That Respond to Dietary Management and Home Remedies Headaches Fevers The Common Cold Coughs Sore Throats Earaches Skin Problems Hair and Nails Digestive Problems Eating Disorders Female Disorders Serious Illness In Conclusion THIRTEEN: THE EFFECTS OF FOOD ON MOOD FOURTEEN: THE EFFECTS OF FOOD ON SEX Levels of Experience The Effects of Vegetarianism The Effects of Sugar and Dairy The Effects of a Change in Diet Food for Men and Women: Should It Be Different? FIFTEEN: A HEALTH NUT IN THE HOSPITAL A Proposal for Unifying the Opposites Afterword Dedication Acknowledgments Notes References Other Books by This Author About the Author Foreword This is the most profound book on nutrition I have ever read. Filled with wisdom—derived from a kaleidoscopic array of sources—Annemarie Colbin successfully integrates modern medicine, folklore, alternative healing systems, legend, myth, and common sense. The result is a mosaic pattern that is as pleasing esthetically as it is practical on a personal level. Coming from a background of modern medicine, I, as well as hundreds of thousands of other M.D.s, was carefully educated in nutritional ignorance—indeed in disdain for food. The hospital “dietician” was not—and is not even today—a teacher of physicians. The dietician’s traditional purpose in life has always been to serve as a “referral” for a patient who bothered the physician with too many questions about food. The very title of this book Food and Healing represents a joining of two concepts that most doctors regard as unrelated. But thanks to my patients, I have learned something about nutrition since my formal education ended. I now appreciate Mark Twain’s answer to the question, “Where did you get your education?” His response: “Throughout my life—except for the years I attended school.” All doctors can learn from Annemarie Colbin what they didn’t learn in school. And because of pressure from insistent patients, who now know that food is important, doctors have a new and powerful incentive to learn. Patients are increasingly aware of the aphorism that when it comes to nutrition, a doctor knows as much as his secretary—unless she has been on a diet, in which case she knows more. But this book is important for many other than M.D.s. For those whose backgrounds are in general nutrition, macrobiotics, herbology, vegetarianism, fruitarianism, homeopathy, iridology, faith healing, reflexology, massage therapy, natural hygiene, and other food and healing systems, Annemarie Colbin has provided an opportunity to make a giant leap forward. While other books are satisfied to downgrade—and even attempt to destroy—those they regard as competitors, Annemarie Colbin instead selects judiciously and comprehensively from each system, correlates aspects of different methods, highlights interrelationships between various approaches—all with thorough documentation and clarity of expression. Taste just a sample of the delicious morsels in this book: • “No one diet is right for everyone all the time.” • “In the modern western belief system ... ‘it could have happened to anyone’ is the consoling, guilt-absorbing response. The sick one is a victim, not responsible for the state of his health.” • “Any cure of a major disease that occurred without official medical intervention is considered ‘spontaneous remission.’ ” • “Could the lack of an integrated energy field in baby formulas be the reason for the high correlation of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and formula feeding?” • “The partial, fragmented, unwholesome, chemically tampered-with foods that the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.) consists of cannot, in the long run, adequately support healthy life processes ...” • “Forcing a sick person to eat ‘to keep up his strength’ overlooks the fact that digestion uses up strength too.” • “Every food philosophy has its dogma and its devils, its sin and its salvation.” In accord with the definition of intelligence as the ability to identify and correlate important relationships, Food and Healing is a quintessentially intelligent book. I recommend it as the state-of-the-art work in the field—second best only to a personal consultation with its author. Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. Author, Confessions of a Medical Heretic Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition When I set out to write Food and Healing in the early 1980s, I intended to lay out a unified field theory of the effects of food on health, and to include practical information on the uses of food as nourishment and as medicine. In the ten years since the book’s publication, I’ve been deluged with positive feedback from readers and students who have applied its principles. I am delighted to have the opportunity, in this preface, to add to the original edition a few comments that incorporate additional information. Just about the time that the book came out, I moved The Natural Gourmet Cookery School out of my home and into its own space fifty blocks downtown. With two kitchens, a lecture room, and office space, it had room for many more students. And paraphrasing a famous line, after I built it, they did come. In 1987, we started offering a six hundred-hour chef’s training program in natural-foods cooking with a food and healing component in it; licensed by the New York State Department of Education, to this day it is the only program of its kind in the country. The school also offers cooking classes to the general public, which are taught by many fine teachers, some of whom are graduates of our programs. I recently resigned as president so as to spend more time teaching and writing, and to pursue further education beyond my 1991 certification as a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES). SEVEN CRITERIA FOR FOOD SELECTION The increased number of classes in the school, as well as numerous lectures all over the country, put me in touch with many more people intent on studying health and nutrition. I have been delighted to see that the principles and mental models I delineated in this book are still holding up successfully. For my classes and lectures, I streamline these principles into a format that helps set the parameters for appropriate food choices. Here, then, are the criteria I have for choosing healthy food. Whenever possible, choose foods that are 1. Whole: As nature provides them, with all their edible parts (grains with their bran and germ, apples with their skin—but not if it’s waxed); cooked or raw vegetables and fruits rather than juices or vitamin pills. Whole foods supply all of nature’s nutrients in a team, as well as providing us with the life energy of the food. 2. Fresh, Natural, Real, Organically Grown: Not canned, not frozen, certainly not irradiated or genetically engineered; free of chemical additives, colorings, preservatives. The foods we choose should be the real thing, full of their life energy, not imitations (like margarine or artificial sweeteners), which invariably turn out to have some health-damaging effect. Organically grown foods not only have been shown to be higher in nutrients, but also taste far superior to the commercial kind. 3. Seasonal: To be in harmony with our environment, it is a good idea to choose summery foods in the summer, wintery foods in the winter. Fruits and vegetables in season are cheaper and do not lose nutrients like foods that have been transported long distances. They also taste better. In addition, seasonal eating means salads and fruit in the summer, soups and stews in the winter. On the whole, most people do eat that way. However, with the advent of refrigeration, freezer trucks, and worldwide transportation, we can get raspberries in December and yams in July. We also ignore this natural order when we go on restricted diets, such as raw food and juice regimes, which require us to eat lots of fruits and vegetables in the winter, or cooked and salty macrobiotic meals in the summer. With these diets we go out of sync with our environment, and we might feel cold in the winter, cranky and depressed in the summer. 4. Local: Local produce tastes better, costs less, and is more nutritious because it is picked riper and does not lose nutrients in travel. The best restaurant chefs in the country have already discovered this and make an effort to obtain the freshest organically grown local foods, which they consider top quality. 5. In Harmony with Tradition: We should pay attention to what our ancestors ate and incorporate those foods into our modern diet whenever possible, maybe with some modifications (less salt, less fat, less sugar). For example, our staple grain will taste more appropriate if our ancestors ate it as well—barley and oats from the British Isles; rye and wheat from Europe; kasha from Eastern Europe and Russia; millet, teff, and sorghum from Africa; millet and rice from Asia; corn and quinoa from the Americas. 6. Balanced: It’s important to make sure there is enough protein, carbohydrates, fat, and micronutrients in our diet as a whole, and to pay attention to the expansive/contractive, acid/alkaline, and Five-Phase Theory systems I describe in this book. For sensory and aesthetic satisfaction, we also need to include foods with a variety of flavors, colors, and textures. 7. Delicious: There is no point in eating “healthy” food if it doesn’t taste good! Besides, our taste buds can guide us, when encountering whole, real, natural foods, to what we need and what we don’t need—and we’d do well to listen. These seven criteria can help us find healthful food wherever we are; they are not dependent on laboratory studies, tables of calories and fat content, or individual nutrients, all of which are subject to endless changes and revisions over the years. They are based on age-old principles and observations, and have been proven good in the laboratory of life. For that reason, this model is “fad-proof” and flexible. When following it, people feel less constrained, less guilt-ridden, less anxious about picking the right food. “It’s very freeing,” I’ve been told over and over. CHANGES IN THE MAINSTREAM Enormous changes have taken place in the public perception of the relationship between food and health, and I’m thrilled at the rapid progress. It is now accepted without question that our diet affects our health and, particularly, that it can affect serious degenerative diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. Since I wrote this book, the low-fat, high–complex carbohydrate diet, originally espoused by Nathan Pritikin and discussed in chapter four, has become the rallying cry of nutrition. Dean Ornish, M.D., has done magnificent work, demonstrating scientifically that a low-fat vegetarian diet, coupled with exercise and stress reduction, can indeed reverse heart disease. 1 As a result, some insurance companies now reimburse their clients for this dietary treatment, and hospitals around the country are beginning to offer it to their patients. What does distress me is that the general public, and the popular media, has come to the conclusion that low fat means fat free. To serve that erroneous assumption, the market has been deluged with products that proudly announce their fat-free status; included are such oxymorons as “fat-free mayonnaise” (real mayonnaise is just oil, egg yolk, and seasonings) and “fat-free margarine,” probably the most absurd product ever invented, as it is an imitation of margarine, which in turn is an imitation of butter. Although I do not necessarily recommend the regular consumption of high-fat foods like butter and mayonnaise, I do believe that the imitation is worse than the original. We’re better off eating a small amount of the real thing, rather than spoonfuls of the imitations. Fat is one of the three macronutrients (protein and carbohydrate being the other two). It is essential to the functioning of our body, as it insulates, protects, and keeps us warm. The breakdown of fat creates heat, so we especially need it in cold climates since it is a highly effective fuel. In addition, fat keeps our cell walls firm, protects the nerves and brain, keeps the skin supple, is a component of hormones and prostaglandins, and, last but not least, makes foods tasty and satisfying. Fat is also needed for the utilization of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Specifically, as vitamin D helps in calcium metabolism, an extremely low-fat diet can, in the long run, damage the bones. Insufficient fat in the diet causes dry skin, brittle nails, feelings of cold, crankiness, and binging. On an extremely low-fat diet that does not provide sufficient essential fatty acids (EFA’s), essential hormonal and regulatory functions of the body are impaired, and people may end up miserable and dissatisfied; they often consume an excess of carbohydrate foods because they’re so hungry, and may put on weight because of this excess and the imbalance of nutrients. Even on low-fat diets, we need at least 10 percent of our calories from fat; I believe that extremely low-fat diets can be dangerous when followed very long term, say over two years. My experience is that many people feel satisfied and can sustain a diet with about 20 percent of their calories coming from fat. This is what we end up with when following the precepts of my Health-Supportive Whole-Foods Diet. * The secret to the healthful use of fats, of course, is to know which fats to use. As Udo Erasmus points out in his book Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, 2 heated, hydrogenated, and processed fats are the most damaging, since they deliver the unhealthy trans -fatty acids, which increase the likelihood of strokes, heart attacks, and impaired immune function. Among the hydrogenated fats we have margarine, shortening, and some commercial peanut butters. Heated fats, as well as unstable polyunsaturated fats (such as oils that have been exposed to oxygen and light by being left in clear glass bottles in brightly lit surroundings), may also form an excess of free radicals; these are highly reactive particles that, if unopposed by the antioxidant nutrients in fruits and vegetables, can go haywire in the body and stimulate cancer, heart disease, and aging. The traditional fats are still the best, when stored in dark containers and used in moderation: extra-virgin olive oil (now highly touted in what has been called the Mediterranean Diet), unrefined sesame oil, and butter (preferably organic). For good health, we can use a variety of these natural, only minimally processed oils and fats in moderate amounts. One tablespoon per person in the preparation of lunch and dinner each—in the soup, the salad, the sautéed vegetables—maybe one teaspoon at breakfast, is quite flavorful, not excessive, and will keep us satisfied. Other healthful fats include flaxseed oil, borage oil, and fats found in cold-water fish. The relationship of diet to cancer is now well accepted, particularly after the publication of Dr. Anthony Satillaro’s well-received book, Recalled by Life. A number of epidemiological studies have proven that a good diet will prevent cancer. The American Cancer Society expends a great deal of effort to encourage people to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Among the best documented are the cruciferous vegetable category, which includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts, and foods high in beta-carotene, such as yams, sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, cantaloupe, and dark greens, such as collards, mustard greens, turnip tops, and parsley. There is a movement afoot called Five-a-Day, which encourages people to consume five servings of fruits and vegetables daily—not a bad place to start! SOY FOODS Miso, tofu, tempeh, and soy milk were already quite popular when this book first came out, and I did discuss them in the section on “Beans.” Since then, there have been many studies about the effects of soybeans, both on animals and on human beings. There are two main points I’d like to add here. 1. Soybeans contain elements that interfere with the absorption of zinc, namely, phytic acid, or phytates. 3 They also contain protease or trypsin inhibitors, elements that interfere with the pancreatic enzymes that help digest protein and that are mostly (but not fully) removed or eliminated by heat and processing. 4 Dry soybeans are fairly difficult to digest, and an excessively high intake of soy foods (more than one serving per day) may be of questionable value. For this reason, in cultures where soybean products are used extensively, they are usually cooked, fermented, or otherwise processed (e.g., tofu, miso, and tempeh) to make them more digestible. 2. Following nature’s sweet ironies, where everything has a positive and a negative aspect, these same trypsin inhibitors, in small amounts, appear to have anticarcinogenic effects. 5 Other elements in the soybean, namely phytoestrogens such as genistein, have been shown to be cancer preventative as well. 6 In addition, soybeans are good for the heart: one review study found that soy protein, when replacing animal protein in the diet, seems to help lower cholesterol and serum triglycerides by about 10 percent each. 7 At the time of this writing, the latter study is making headlines, and the soy-food craze looks poised to imitate the oat-bran craze of a few years ago. Interestingly, that review study was funded in part by a company that manufactures and markets soy-protein products, and the principal author of the study is on the company’s Health and Nutrition Advisory Group; nevertheless, the paper went through the proper peer reviews before publication, and the author is considered a reputable scientist. 8 What is not clear to me is this: Does the cholesterol go down because the soy protein does something to it, or does it go down because there is no more animal protein in the diet? I would say that the latter is just as possible as the former. Not eating food that makes us sick has just as much of a healing effect as consuming foods that are good for us. As with all other healthful foods, let’s remember that with soy foods, a little is good, too much is no good. THE FOOD PYRAMID The official standard for meal balancing used to be The Four Food Groups. In the early 1990s the Food Pyramid was introduced, which was a big step forward, although we still have a way to go. The Food Pyramid suggests that we consume daily 6 to 11 servings of grains and cereals; however, there is no mention made about whether they should be refined and unrefined. It also recommends 3 to 4 servings of vegetables (again with no mention about whether fresh, frozen, canned, irradiated, or organically raised); 2 to 3 servings of fruit (ditto); 2 to 3 servings of dairy products; 2 to 3 servings of protein, either meats or beans. Fats and sweets are to be used “sparingly”; however, their position at the top of the pyramid gives a confusing message as they’re “on top,” but supposedly to be consumed in the smallest amount. While the number of servings seems to suggest a large amount of food, the “servings” themselves are small, e.g., ½ cup cooked spaghetti (most people eat two cups). With minor adjustments, this is a workable model. Even vegetarians can use it by picking beans from the protein group. Vegans, macrobiotics, and others who eschew dairy products can replace that category with sea vegetables or leafy greens for their calcium sources. Also, as I suggest in this book, we’d do well to search out the fresh, natural, organically grown foodstuffs. Finally the official government recommendations have come closer to those of the “health food” community, which can only improve the health of the public. FOOD COMBINING Many people have asked me why I didn’t discuss the question of food combining, as delineated in the hugely popular book Fit for Life, by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. I didn’t because our books were published closely together, and I hadn’t seen theirs in time to comment on it. Food combining, a system originally set up by Herbert Shelton, recommends that we eat only fruit from four A.M. to noon; that we eat both our main meals between noon and eight P.M.; and that we eat nothing at all between eight P.M. and four A.M. Our main meals should consist only of either protein and vegetables or grains and beans and vegetables; starches (potatoes, bread, rice, whole grains) and animal protein (fish, fowl, meat, eggs) should not be eaten together; fruit should be eaten by itself, never with vegetables; and melons should always be eaten alone. Students of mine who have tried this system have told me that fruit for breakfast works best in the summer or in warm climates, and for people who are physically active. On the other hand, for office workers and in cold climates this regime often makes them chilled, hungry, and tired. These reactions can be understood with the expansive/contractive, heating/cooling concepts discussed in chapter three. The meal combinations (protein and vegetables, no starch; or starch and vegetables, no protein) are difficult for widespread use in the average diet; many habitual combinations, such as fish and rice or chicken and pasta, are excluded. Meals that are vegan (zero animal protein) create no problem as long as they don’t mix fruits and vegetables. The meal combinations seem to be very successful for both digestion problems and weight loss. People with digestive disorders have less distress following the food-combining strategy. For weight loss, the system is especially effective in diets that include regular consumption of animal foods; for example, lunch might be broiled fish, stir-fried broccoli and onions, salad (no starch); dinner might include lentil soup, brown rice, greens with garlic, baked squash (no animal protein). FURTHER NOTES ON FOOD REMEDIES I’ve had terrific feedback on the remedies section in chapter twelve of this book. When people understand the systems theory from part 1 , they can easily pick their own remedy for various conditions. Here I will discuss one major food remedy, garlic, that I inadvertently neglected, and also expound on the Apple Juice–Kuzu remedy I discuss in the text. 1. Garlic. This natural antibiotic has many culinary uses and has also been a respected herbal remedy in many cultures. Scientific research has found that garlic enhances the immune system, lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and protects against infection. • PLAIN GARLIC: To prevent infection and even dysentery when traveling, take one raw clove, cut into a few small pieces, and swallow with a little water or juice one to three times per day. • RUSSIAN GARLIC BREAD: Take one piece of whole-grain bread, well toasted so it’s somewhat crisp; rub one clove of raw garlic all over the bread, then sprinkle a few drops of olive oil and a few grains of sea salt all over it. It’s a great snack when your appetite is low. It is a good idea to give everyone in the family a piece. • GARLIC SOUP: One quart water or stock; 1 whole head of garlic, cloves peeled; 1 heaping tablespoon miso, or to taste. Simmer the garlic cloves in the water or stock for 15 minutes; fish them out and put them in the blender with a little stock and the miso; puree, return to pot with the rest of the stock, adjust taste, and serve hot. I’ve used this recipe with great success when feeling under the weather or about to “come down” with something. I have also found it helpful in overcoming the effects of antibiotics, particularly when taken with acidophilus capsules—two per day—for a few days to a week after a course of that medicine. 2. Kuzu. This lumpy starch has been used in Japan for centuries, and in the macrobiotic community since the early 1960s, as a thickener for sauces as well as a remedy for all kinds of digestive disorders. Several of these remedies are delineated in chapter twelve, “Food as Medicine.” Research published in 1994 has shown that this food can also modify the response to and craving for alcohol in those who are prone to such cravings. 9 I would recommend the shoyukuzu drink #1 † any time the desire for alcohol hits, or one to three cups daily as a preventative. According to the feedback from students who’ve tried it, the apple juice–kuzu pudding is a superb antistress and antiinsomnia remedy when taken at night. It also helps calm down overexcited children. I once recommended it to a Vietnam vet who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and it helped him relax and calm down. Years later I got a letter from a woman who had heard about this anecdote and started using apple juice–kuzu pudding for her panic attacks. She wrote that after two days of taking this remedy three times daily, her panic attacks stopped. It seems to me that some serious research into the effects of kuzu is in order. Since kudzu is a weed that grows wild in great quantities in the South, it seems as if nature is offering us an easily accessible herbal remedy for some of our more difficult problems. Certainly that notion makes sense to my understanding of how balance happens in the universe. DRUGS AND DISEASE My original intent in writing this book was to show that food is “it” in terms of our health, that unhealthy food is the major cause of disease, and thereby can be its main healer. While I was in the middle of writing it, I realized that food isn’t really the only cause of disease, but it does play a major role. I thought of the people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties who are in fine health, despite eating junk or whatever they please. Wondering about this blow to my theory, I realized that these people were breast-fed when young, raised on home-cooked food, were not given vaccines or antibiotics during their childhood, and, most tellingly, they don’t go to the doctor when they’re sick. They just have some tea or a shot of whiskey and go to bed until the problem goes away. Most of us know someone like that. I saw then, with unhesitating inner knowledge, that today food is not the only cause of the diseases of civilization that we see proliferating all around us. Many of our problems stem from the medical drugs that we take, and especially inject, to treat or prevent illness. This is particularly true of medicines we give to our children when they’re young. Thus I saw that if we avoid the inner pollution and disruption of drugs for minor illnesses, we will be more resistant to the outer pollution of unhealthy foods and environmental chemicals. This vision hit me with the force of a revelation, and it left me stunned. While I did discuss this concept briefly in the section on “Serious Illness,” over the past ten years I have become even more certain that my vision was correct. Drugs—I mean medical and legal drugs, which are simply the opposite of the illegal ones—are proliferating at a rate that seems unstoppable. Every health problem, regardless of its true cause, is reason for more research to find yet another magic bullet. The media touts every new drug as the great new hope for our deliverance from disease. Nobody seems to notice that every great new drug hope always turns out to have nasty adverse effects, so that twenty years later we have to deal with the new diseases caused by it. Then we have to find yet another drug that heals those new diseases. The more time goes on, the worse it gets, and the more I am firmly convinced that iatrogenic (doctor- or treatment-caused) disease is the great unacknowledged, worldwide health tragedy of the twentieth century. Fortunately, even though food is not always the cause, it is often the cure for many of our new health problems. People who develop allergies and immune disorders because of the overuse of antibiotics, drugs, and vaccinations are finding that a change in diet, especially along the lines of this book, helps them bounce back and recuperate. The two iatrogenic conditions that respond best to dietary modification are allergies and candidiasis, or candida. Allergies of any kind improve when the sufferers eliminate sugar, milk products, and their particular allergen, such as wheat, corn, tomatoes, soy, or nuts. A good clinical ecologist can help determine the exact foods and substances to eliminate. Candida, or a systemic yeast overgrowth caused by antibiotics and other drugs, responds to a diet devoid of sugar, sweeteners, and fermented foods, such as bread, wine, cheese, vinegar, miso, soy sauce, tempeh, molds (and the foods that harbor them such as dry fruits and juices), pickles, mustard, sauerkraut. In addition, this condition is best managed with a high-protein (beans and animal food) and low-carbohydrate diet. 10 ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE An underground and unacknowledged world for decades, even though 70 percent of the world uses it, “alternative” or “complementary” medicine was thrust into the limelight in 1993 by an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. The article pointed out that nearly a third of Americans utilize the services of alternative- health practitioners, spend $10.3 billion out-of-pocket on it yearly, and don’t tell their medical doctors about it. 11 The Office of Alternative Medicine, funded by Congress as part of the National Institutes of Health in 1992, opened one year later. Soon, conferences on alternative medicine began to spring up everywhere. In 1994, two serious peer-reviewed journals in the field were launched, 12 and more and more physicians are paying attention to healing modalities other than Western technological medicine. The growth of nondrug therapies offers real possibilities for the improvement of our collective health. This amplification of the field of healing was a vision I laid out in this book (see “A Proposal for Unifying the Opposites”). I am thoroughly delighted to see it now happening. New York City, July 1995 * See text. † See text for all kuzu preparations. Introduction: The Power of Food Some of the best years of my life were those I spent in high school in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. I had a wonderful group of friends and still have strong bonds of affection with many of them. Among these is Elida, one of my closest buddies; she and I and two other girls were known as “the Four Bewitchers”—actually a name we had invented for ourselves, hoping to live up to it. Much water has passed under the bridge since then, and Elida and I had managed to see each other only three times in the twenty years since I’d left Argentina; but we kept in touch. Imagine my delight when I received a letter from her, in August 1981, in which she told me that she was coming to New York for two whole weeks. The first week she would be alone; her husband, Pedro, would join her for the second. She called me from her home in Rio de Janeiro a few days before her departure to ask me to find her a hotel. Instead, I invited her to stay with us. The children were away for the summer, so their room was free; they’d be returning just a day after Pedro was due to arrive, so everything would dovetail perfectly. Elida and Pedro could spend the rest of their stay in a nice hotel. Elida was thrilled. So was I. Time and distance seemed not to have cooled our friendship. I wondered whether a week together would strengthen or weaken that old bond. How much could she have changed? I remembered her as an attractive, vibrant brunette who always gestured when she spoke and had an enthusiastic lilt to her voice. She used to laugh a lot, too. I looked forward to a week of much chatter and reminiscence, albeit with vague trepidation: How would Elida feel about the spartan vegetarian fare in our home? Finally, she arrived, and it didn’t take me too long to find that, indeed, our friendship was as strong as ever. However, I was startled by the physical changes in my friend. Elida’s health was not good; she had diabetes, was taking an insulin shot daily, her hands were bloated, and she was overweight. She was often tired and was unable to walk more than a few blocks at a time. I found that there was even more to worry about. “Why do you walk so stiffly?” I asked her at one point. “I can’t feel my feet,” she said. “What?” “That’s right, I can’t. Look,” she said, and showed me the nails on her big toes; they were black and blue. “I wore some tight shoes last week and couldn’t tell that they were cutting off my circulation. Now I’m going to lose those nails.” I was horrified. “You have to do something! At this rate, you’ll get gangrene, and soon you’ll be walking around with a wooden leg!” I looked her squarely in the eye. “You’re my age, and that’s too young to have a wooden leg.” She giggled, but there was no mirth in her eyes. “What does your doctor say?” I asked. She shrugged. “Nothing. He gave me medication, but it doesn’t seem to help, so I don’t bother. He told me to stop eating sugar but doesn’t tell me what else to do.” We just looked at each other. I could see her native vitality still shining through her ill health. If allowed to work, that vitality would help her heal very quickly. “Well, my dear friend,” I said, “there must be a reason why you’ve landed in my hands for a whole week. Let’s see what happens after a few days of birdseed and rabbit food.” She laughed. “I’m willing to try,” she said. On the second morning after her arrival, Elida called me into her room to show me her hands. “Look,” she said. They were puffed up like balloons, and she could barely remove her ring. “If I don’t eat sugar, I blow up. My kidneys don’t work. When I eat sugar, it acts like a diuretic and I urinate gallons, and then there is no bloat.” She had spent the day before eating with us, and that meant that she’d had nothing with sugar in it. It’s not that she hadn’t known about my lifestyle. Our sporadic contact had kept her up to date with my involvement in natural foods, my cooking classes, and my interest in natural healing. She had even asked for a copy of my cookbook, The Book of Whole Meals, and I had sent it to her. She knew as well that I had recently remarried and that my husband was a vegetarian cook also. Thus she was quite prepared for a change in her diet. What she found was a fairly austere home regimen, enlivened with two or three weekly outings during which we partook of fish or perhaps poultry. For breakfast, there was brown rice and vegetables; for lunch, bean or lentil soup, whole-grain bread, and salad; for snacks, fruit, or rice cakes with apple butter; for dinner, a grain, beans, vegetables, salad. For Elida I added aduki beans cooked with kombu seaweed * , of which I offered her a small bowl twice daily; these small red Japanese beans are traditionally considered to be strengthening for the kidneys. Sure enough, Elida reported with glee that they were a much better diuretic than sugar. I also decided to manifest my feelings as a caring friend and strongly admonished her to stay away from sugar and alcohol 100 percent. What I didn’t tell her is that such sacrifice would be quite easy to undertake if she ate our food: When one eats no meat, one needs no sugar—if at the same time the diet includes whole grains. Thus my friend found herself plunked, with practically no transition, into a totally different dietary mode. From a diet high in meat protein, fat, sugar, alcohol, and soft drinks, she went to complex carbohydrates (whole grains, beans, vegetables), low fat, little natural sugar (fruit was only an occasional snack), herb teas, and, at times, apple juice. Ah yes, and no milk, butter, cheese, or yogurt either. I must say she handled the shock well. Only the first day was there a reaction—her bloated hands. But soon the aduki beans went to work, and within two days the bloating had vanished. On the morning of her third day with us, I gave Elida a shiatsu acupressure massage. I am by no means an expert masseuse, but I know enough to do it for family and friends. One of the things I know is that if I find a pressure point that hurts, it means that energy is blocked there and I must keep on massaging it gently but firmly until it begins