It Happened This Week: The Many Faces of Food as Medicine

Rosemary is a powerful antioxidant and adds great flavor to foods.

It’s been a busy week here at Green Mountain with the debut of our new Food as Medicine program. We opened with a showing of Food, Inc., to provide a good backdrop for some of the food quality issues we planned to talk about. If you haven’t seen it, Grist has an article on ammonia-hamburgers that will give you a peek at the substance of the movie. Be forewarned. It’s not a pleasant read.

A more pleasant read is Nutrition Unplugged’s look at 2010 food trends. “Food is the new insurance” definitely fits our food as medicine theme.

Lest you think food as medicine sounds a bit severe, Julie at Iceberg to Arugula answers the question, “What do dietitians eat…really?” Not severe at all, and as you can imagine, most are on board with the concept of food as medicine for themselves and their clients.

Two new great books debuted this year, and both present different aspects of using food as medicine. Michelle May, MD, came out with Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat which focuses on a healthy relationship with food — something we’ve focused on since our inception in 1973. If you don’t have a healthy relationship with food, the end result isn’t going to be healthy. Check out this review of it on WebMD.

I haven’t read registered dietitian Elizabeth Somer’s new book Eat Your Way to Happiness. But the title itself sounds great, and if it’s anything like Elizabeth’s previous books, which I’m sure it is, it’s sure to have some great info.

It’s going to be cold this weekend in Vermont so I just might curl up with a good book. I’ll skip watching Food, Inc. again.

Have a good one!