Preface

Throughout time, food has been used in healing. In recent decades food and medicine have taken divergent paths. Food has become bereft of nutrients, and modern medicine has sought to heal with technical advances that initially seem dazzlingly more powerful than food. Consequently, the healing potential of food is underutilized in modern medicine.

After decades of journeying on different paths, food and medicine are now located far from each other in the health care system. The current gap between food and medicine is illustrated in our terminology, which considers food and nutrients to be alternative and complementary to modern medicine. Not only do such terms contradict the obvious—we must eat to live—they imply the opposite of what has taken place. Food and nutrients are the original medicine. They are the molecules of biochemistry, physiology, and immunology, and the shoulders on which modern medicine stands.

This textbook was developed to help physicians reunite food and medicine in clinical practice. With food deviating from what the human body was designed to eat, with the population's health challenged, and with emerging technologies creating new clinical tools, this is a time like no other to restore food and nutrients to their vital clinical roles.