Eating Whole Foods and Food as Medicine: A How-To Guide
Eating Whole Foods and Food as Medicine: A How-To Guide
Just as we have come to rely on expert opinions with the most basic issues in our body, like seeking a pill for every ailment, we have come to rely on food science to tell us what to eat. This is the same food science that removes the nourishing stuff from our foods and fills it with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, refined sugar, refined flour and fillers like cellulose, which are much cheaper, thus increasing their profit margins substantially. Yet, we go to them to ask them what we should eat for optimal health. The more afraid and confused we are, the more dependent we are on them. And they know this. In this article we explore eating whole foods and food as our medicine.
These are the people who think we can simplify our soil down to NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). They think we can define a fruit or vegetable just by what vitamins are in it. Sure, we’ve learned quite a bit about the nutrition in our food. But, although they can tell us a lot of what is in an apple, they certainly do not know it well enough to create an apple. We now know that synthetic vitamins in pill form are not the same as the vitamins delivered through eating them in the actual fruit or vegetable, along with the many unknown natural constituents that exist within the whole form. There is more that we don’t know than we do know. Yet, food science has prescribed an answer to us that shows they believe otherwise.
And the most ridiculous part about all of this is that none of this is needed! The healthiest cultures on Earth are not listening to food scientists or eating the “miracles” of industrial agriculture. They are listening to thousands of years of food culture from their grandparents and their parents. The sickest cultures on Earth — that’s us — have lost connection to our food and instead are relying on the food industry through food scientists, PR firms and government entities like the USDA that they have hired to work for them.
All of this stuff we just don’t need is destroying our own health and destroying the health of Earth.
Our food can be medicine that keeps our bodies healthy and functional, or it can be poison that slowly kills us. Although this concept has by now become quite natural and flowing for me, I remember how far I was from this place ten years ago and that this is where many of my fellow humans are today. I invite you to eat whole foods and embrace your food as your medicine, and in the article ahead, I share my simple and summarized tips through my many years of transforming my diet.
My Simple, Summarized Suggestions
Whole Foods
Eat whole foods. That simply means foods in their whole, unprocessed form. Base your diet around whole foods – any whole foods – and you will be embracing thousands of years of the human success story. Fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, meat, whole milk and eggs: these are all whole foods.
Unprocessed Food
Eat minimally processed foods. Processing is not inherently detrimental and, in fact, processing is necessary to preserve and store the abundance of the land. Even more so, there are numerous processes that make food more nourishing, wholesome, digestible and medicinal. Many minimally processed foods are one ingredient. For example: almonds into almond butter, wheat grains into whole wheat flour, and milk into butter. Minimally processed foods can also have numerous ingredients such as whole wheat flour, salt, rosemary and sesame seeds to make bread. Minimal processing includes chopping, blending, dehydrating, canning, freezing; all processes that can be done at home without any inaccessible technology.
Ingredients List
At the supermarket, to follow this ethos diligently would mean looking at the ingredient list of every food you are interested in buying and only purchasing it if there are no ingredients that are not clearly a food to you. Just imagine, could you eat that ingredient simply on its own? This simple guideline to follow would take care of all “natural flavors,” food dyes, emulsifiers, fillers, gums and synthetic vitamins. Any food that has a single one of these ingredients brings the integrity of the entire food into question for me. To take it even further, you can make sure that every ingredient is one that has been minimally processed; for example, whole wheat flour, not white flour.
Unpackaged Food
One of the simplest ways to accomplish this mission is to purchase only unpackaged foods. There is only a small percentage of unpackaged foods that are more than minimally processed in most stores that offer unpackaged food. On the other hand, the vast majority of packaged foods are highly processed or ultra-processed. The bulk section at a food co-op or health food store is the center of a whole foods, minimally packaged and unprocessed diet for many people who eat this way.
Highly Nourishing Food
Now, you can still have whole foods that are very nutrient deficient. A whole foods diet is taken to another level by sourcing food from anywhere that produces food with high integrity, with a focus on soil life, biodiversity and ecological farming practices. These foods can be many times more concentrated with different vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and all the health benefits you hope to get from your food. These foods won’t have pharmaceuticals and growth hormones in them.
Eat the Rainbow
Eating the rainbow is an enjoyable way to meet your goals of a balanced diet. Different colors represent different vitamins and eating the rainbow is a simple way to make sure you are eating diverse foods.
Supplements
Most supplements and vitamins are not whole, unprocessed foods. With the deepest level of faith in this type of eating, they are no longer needed. And there are plenty of people who follow this today (like billions of humans have until now).
Homegrown and Foraged
Of course, eating a one hundred percent homegrown and foraged diet can result in perfect adherence to this diet, whether we grow and forage it ourselves or source this food directly from the community.
Convenience, Preservation and Time Restraints
I don’t think people are particularly interested in eating most of the food-like substances that they do. It’s really the convenience that they are after. Eating solely off the land, I generally didn’t miss any particular food. What I missed was convenience. But, we can make our own convenience and people have been doing it for a very long time. We can process our own foods and we can package them up, creating the same ultra convenience that the supermarkets, delivery foods and restaurants provide.
Dehydrating fruits gives us dried fruit to snack on. Dehydrating meat gives us jerky. Pressure canning of soups and stews allows us to pop a jar out of the pantry, and eat it on the spot. Water bath canning of fruits gives us sauces (like applesauce), jams, jellies and juices. Drying of herbs and a simple blending creates convenient herb powders for cooking. Dehydrating and blending of a variety of greens can serve as a convenient daily multi-vitamin! With some foresight and labor, these processes can create incredible convenience for the months and years ahead. These foods are naturally preserved, requiring no added preservatives.
The freezer is a helpful tool, of course. Frozen mangoes or bananas can be quickly blended to make a fruit “ice cream.” And, of course, the refrigerator can be helpful if you have one of those, but some people eating this diet no longer even keep a fridge!
With convenience, we are all seeking to save time. And giving up the convenience of the grocery store means that we are taking on the responsibility of managing our own time effectively. That is where bulk food prep and meal prep comes in.
If you are limited on time, you will find it very difficult to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. But if you prepare a large soup at once, it doesn’t take too much longer than preparing the same small soup. Then you can eat it for dinner every day for the next week. Once I started making meals in bulk, my life changed dramatically for the better. Many people will food-prep for the week, not necessarily by making the meals in bulk, but by processing the ingredients on a Sunday so that they can be easily used at each meal during the work or school week.
A crock pot can save many hours. You can put all the ingredients in the pot in the morning and come home after a day’s work to a hot and ready meal. I embraced the Instant Pot and was able to put my meals together, turn it on, go to the garden for an hour or two and come back to hot food, without any concern of it overcooking. I generally embrace the least technology possible, but the crock pot/electric pressure cooker has been an incredible tool for me.
In this realm, I also encourage the embrace of simple eating. Many people believe that our food needs to be complex in order to be loved by our guests. But there are so many foods that we can make that take very little time, yet yield the satisfaction we desire. We can even easily make our own granola bars, bread, chips, popcorn, ice cream, bone broth and so much more, without stepping into the world of processed foods!
For the kitchen tools I recommend and used during this year, see the Gear and Tools List in the Empowerment Manual.
Most who embrace this diet find that they have a lot less desire to eat out. One reason is it can be much more difficult to tell what’s in the food at restaurants, even when asking. However, there are many restaurants that serve truly whole foods, and what creates convenience is making them your go-to when you choose to eat out, rather than trying a new restaurant each week.
Food as Medicine
As I’ve said many times in this practice, our food is our medicine. However, there are many plants that are used solely for medicine and are not foods. Herbal teas, made of dehydrated or fresh herbs, were part of my daily medicine practice. There are many schools both in-person and online that teach this practice, including the Florida School of Holistic Medicine, People’s Medicine School, Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine and more. And there are even “Farmacies” that you can purchase this type of medicine from. Walden Farmacy is one that I visited that inspired me greatly. You can read Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide to get acquainted and begin your practice. To learn more about herbal medicine, see the Introduction to Herbal Medicine in the Empowerment Manual.
Wild Fermentation
When it comes to the ultimate food and medicine in one, we come to wild fermentation. The practice embraces that there is bacteria and yeast present in every breath we take and on every surface of food that comes from the earth. By working with this bacteria, we can transform our foods into being more bioavailable, digestible and nourishing. Wild fermentation creates probiotics and many ferments are shown to improve digestion and support a healthy immune system. In my opinion, wild fermentation plays a key role in fostering a healthy gut microbiome. At the same time, fermentation often makes our food more tasty! Sauerkraut, sourdough bread, apple cider vinegar and pickled veggies are four of my favorite wild fermented foods and these foods require no fancy ingredients or expensive equipment. Read Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz – the Johnny Appleseed of Fermentation – to explore deeper. (However, I warn you that after reading this book you may start to love bacteria and no longer fear it.)
When we bring this all together, this is convenience and comfort that doesn’t destroy our health in the long run. On the contrary, this is convenience and comfort that keeps us out of the doctor’s office. Imagine the nation we’d be living in if we embraced the simple practices of eating whole, minimally packaged, unprocessed foods along with herbal medicine and moving our body. It would mean the crumbling of much of the destructive society we have today and the creation of a much more harmonious society. It would be a revolution.
Contrary to popular belief, when you bring this all together, this doesn’t end up being more expensive. It actually saves money. And I’ll tell you from experience, it’s really not as hard to prepare delicious and nutritious food as the industry has tried to convince us that it is. Nature’s already done most of the work for us. We just have to keep it simple!
Resources
For a deeper dive into my practices, read: “My Natural Personal Hygiene and Preventative Healthcare” article. See also My Ideal Diet in the Empowerment Manual for details on the ideals that make up my own personal whole foods diet.
You’ve likely noticed that I do not adhere to or recommend any specific diet types such as paleo, keto, vegan or gluten free, and there is very little food science discussed. Instead, I just focus on what billions of humans have done for thousands of years, eating whole foods from the earth. I don’t want to overcomplicate things or contribute to the confusion and overwhelm that so many are experiencing today. That said, there are a few resources for nutrition that I have found to be of high integrity that I’d like to share with you to explore:
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon by Sally Fallon and her website nourishingtraditions.com for her take on nutrition and traditional diets.
The writing by Zach Bush, MD on the gut microbiome and The Good Gut by Justin and Erica Sonnenburg.
Traditional Ayurvedic food and medicine through The Ayurvedic Institute and online resources ayurveda.com.
Healthful Foods by Jethro Kloss was one of my first introductions to natural foods for health and healing.
This article is an excerpt from Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food. Food Freedom is an empowerment manual to break free from the destructive food system and live in closer harmony with Earth through growing food, foraging and embracing community.
We welcome you to order the paperback copy here or download the eBook here.
100% of profits, after book distribution, are donated to Gardens of Liberation, supporting Indigenous and Black-led food sovereignty initiatives.