INTRODUCTION

 

Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.
—Hippocrates

 

 

Take Charge of Your Health!

 

It’s almost impossible to read a magazine or news article without happening on an ad for one pharmaceutical drug or another. These drugs are generally very expensive, but the reader is assured that they are worth ten times the price on account of their wonderful properties and ability to treat or cure everything from restless leg syndrome to memory problems to obesity. The pharmaceutical companies selling these medications seemingly flourish like flowers in May and spend many thousands of dollars per year in advertising. Many of us are led blindly into wasting our money and further injuring our health by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties and effects we know absolutely nothing. But are there alternatives to these pharmaceutical concoctions? Of course there are! Studies are constantly proving that what we eat can often be as or more potent than a prescribed drug.

 

Nutrition, health, and wellness are intricately inter-linked. Vibrant, nutritionally dense foods possess great healing potential. The foods covered in this book are powerful enough to put you in a better mood, help you lower your cholesterol, and reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer. A healthy diet incorporating a variety of the following foods will help you prevent and fight disease, as well as maintain your weight, feel younger and live longer.

 

What is in this book? This book begins by briefly explaining the connection between foods and your health. It offers you some suggestions for potent foods that will lead you to better overall health. Part two of this book focuses on exploring more deeply the health benefits and medicinal uses of particular foods. The last section of this book is organized by health conditions and is intended to serve as a cross reference to the information provided earlier sections.

 

It is my hope that the information in this book will help you learn how food can truly be a delicious medicine and how you can eat not just for sustenance, but pleasure and improved health as well.