Let´s admit it: Good health is one of the most important foundations of a satisfactory and happy life.

Im sure you´d find it difficult to really enjoy anything in life, or to produce quality work, while you suffer from intense pain and discomfort, or feel a permanent threat of death hanging over you.

When we are healthy we tend to forget all about illness, and see radiant health as a permanent quiet companion we don´t even need to pay attention to, or be grateful for. Much less protect ourselves against risks we ought to be aware of. But such lack of attention could turn out to be a serious mistake, that we could come to deeply regret at a later date.

As soon as we think about it, we should realize that active, knowledgeable prevention is the obvious key to a healthy, care-free life.

It´s really a matter of awareness about the conditions under which we live.

Of course perfect health should be our birth right and natural state. And it seems that wild animals rarely succumb to illness, even though they finally die, like all living beings on this Earth.

A friend of mine, who has become an expert on certain health issues after curing himself from a series of encounters with ill health, says his ambition now is to stay healthy till he dies. To do that he pays close attention to his life style and daily habits, and especially to the food he eats. And he quotes the famous words of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, considered the father of western medicine:
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food!”

Understanding that food is the natural foundation for all physical conditions of the human being, should be as basic and obvious as understanding that we die if we do not get air to breathe, or water to drink.

But I am not just talking about the need for food in general in order to survive. I am referring specifically to the composition and quality of the food we eat. In other words that the food we eat must contain all the minerals, amino acids, vitamins and other components that the body cannot produce itself but needs in order to function well.

And it´s just as important that the food does NOT contain poisonous chemicals and other ingredients that make us sick. Or, for that matter, too much of certain nutrients that also make us sick if taken in excess. Point in case being sugar and other so called fast carbohydrates.

These crucial conditions for health have been dangerously downplayed by modern medicine during the last century. I remember very well when doctors used to say that it made no difference at all to your health what kind of food you ate.

And even today, when doctors at least pay lip service to the importance of vegetables and fruit, for instance, the curriculum in medical schools still only dedicates a matter of hours – out of typically six years or more of studies – to nutrition and the effects of different foods on the organism. And, to boot, much of the information it then delivers to the medical students is plain wrong, aggravating health instead of protecting it.

It´s true that in the last 50 years or so, public health authorities in the US have picked up the theme of nutrition and made authoritative recommendations as to its ideal composition. Immediately, health authorities on the eastern coast of the Atlantic, i.e. Europe, followed Uncle Sam´s lead and echoed the same dietary recommendations to its ignorant and trusting populations.

Unfortunately, the nutritional advice they offered has been pointing the wrong way. Indeed, it has directly caused the overweight pandemic with its accompanying surge in chronic disease that´s now plaguing the US and its imitators around the world. In part, this can be attributed to ignorance or sloppy science.

However, there is no doubt in my mind, that much of this disinformation was intentional and due to potent lobbying by certain food industries in cooperation with some pharmaceutical companies.

It´s logical and obvious that these recommendations have had a powerful influence over the eating and buying habits of the people exposed to them. The motive behind faking them would have been profit and power, and those responsible may, or may not, have been aware of the disastrous consequences these recommendations have had for the general health status of the populations. Consequences that have given the pharmaceutical industry´s “bottom line” a major boost. So much so, that it has become the most profitable industrial branch of all, with the possible exceptions of the secretive military industry and the illegal drug trade.

There is a saying that´s become popular in certain circles: “You are what you eat”.