09/23/2021
The best strategy for a long and healthy life is to eat your medicine—get your drugs at the farmacy, not the pharmacy! Food is far more than just calories or energy to fuel our bodies. It is information, instructions that regulate every function of our bodies in real-time.
Food is not only a source of energy, joy, connection, and pleasure; it can also rejuvenate us and even reverse disease. When we think of food, we think of protein, carbohydrates, fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But the most important parts of food may be the tens of thousands of medicinal compounds embedded in plants and even animal foods that regulate, modulate, and influence nearly all of the 37 billion billion chemical reactions that occur in our bodies every second. I call this process symbiotic‐phytoadaptation. It means our bodies use chemicals found in food to beneficially influence each of our biological systems.
Through evolution, we have borrowed the molecular magic embedded in foods to optimize and supercharge our biology. For example, we can’t synthesize vitamin C or omega-3 fats; we have to get these from nature. And it’s not just the obvious essential fatty acids, amino acids, and vitamins and minerals we get from our food; we also get important molecules called phytochemicals.
There are 25,000-plus phytochemicals in the plant kingdom identified to date, and they’ve only recently been deemed critical for health. Surprisingly they are also found in animals, such as in grass-fed cows, who consume a wide array of nutrient-dense plant foods. While deficiency of these phytochemicals may not result in an acute disease like scurvy or rickets or in protein malnutrition, it can lead to long-latency deficiency diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, dementia, depression, and more.
The only way to take advantage of these disease-fighting compounds is to focus on our food quality. Deeply colorful plant foods, organic and grass-fed meats, and wild fatty fish are abundant in compounds that protect our cells and fight off invaders. Every time you take a bite of food, consider that you are programming your biology for health or disease.
