Let food be your medicine...

"Let food be your medicine, not medicine your food."

This brilliant piece of wisdom came from the father of medicine, Hippocrates himself. But as medical science has advanced and modern life has progressed, we seem to have forgotten this very important principle.

My attitude to food has undergone a complete revolution in the past two months. Since I have been researching the links between diet and autism I have been absolutely amazed and appalled at what we rich, smart, western people are doing to ourselves.

First of all we add fertilizers, chemicals and pesticides in abundance to our crops to grow more, better produce. Then we process and refine that produce so that any goodness it had has all but disappeared. Because it then is lacking in vitamins and minerals we add extras, refine it some more, add sugar, preservatives and colourings so it 'looks' better, tastes sweeter and lasts longer, package it up in two or three bags, advertise it as '97% fat free' and sell it on as healthy and good for us.

I used to just ignore the lists of numbers after the main ingredients on the labels (if I ever read them at all). Now I look at them and realise that all of those things I eat are putting extra strain on my body, and my children's bodies.

That's not even mentioning the substances we inhale, rub on our skin, wash in, drink and spray insects with around the house.

I have just read an illuminating book called 'The Gut and Psychology Syndrome' by Dr Natasha McBride-Campbell (MD PhD etc etc). She argues very effectively that there is a strong link between our modern sugar-heavy, additive-laden, highly processed diet and all of these: ADD, ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, schizophrenia, depression.

Let's follow Hippocrates' advice. Treat food as medicine. Value it's life-sustaining properties, as God made it. Let's not just eat whatever rubbish we think we can indulge in and then medicate ourselves for the results with even more substances.