FOOD AS MEDICINE:

Professor Kerryn Phelps and daughter Jaime Rose Chambers share recipes to help protect your body from disease

“Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates’ famous quote, as well as evidence from many other ancient cultures such as the Ayurvedic tradition, proves that the link between diet, lifestyle and our health has been well known for thousands of years. Yet despite this, chronic disease is still the major cause of illness and mortality worldwide.

A chronic disease is a long-lasting health condition such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis or diabetes. Some of the major risk factors that you can control are what you eat, how much energy (or kilojoules) you consume and the amount of exercise and activity you do. Well what about genetics, you might ask? You can’t control that! Studies have shown that genetics do play a role in chronic disease but only by about 20-30 per cent in terms of longevity and that, in fact, factors such as nutrition and other lifestyle measures may have a more powerful role in determining your lifespan.

Today, we are gathering more and more knowledge and developing greater understanding than ever about food and nutrition and its relationship to health and wellbeing. We’re able to be more specific and more prescriptive when it comes to nutritional medicine.

Many people have micronutrient deficiencies because they have a limited dietary repertoire. One common example is when a member of a “meat and three veg” family decides that they want to be vegetarian or vegan. This often means that the new vegetarian is provided with the same food as everyone else in the family minus the meat/chicken/fish. Many people who have grown up with a traditional Australian, British or European background don’t know what to do with tofu or tempeh. Many people don’t think to include legumes or grains in their diet. This is a recipe for micronutrient deficiency, a diet lacking in protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B12 in particular.