Food as Medicine

It is quite remarkable that the first treatise on the medicinal qualities of foods was compiled in China about the second century B.C. Of the book, The Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor, the Chinese scholar Cai Jingfeng wrote, “The foundations of the etiology, pathology, pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention (of disease) are laid down, (along with) the theoretical basis for die to therapy.” The Chinese, therefore, were among the first to link health with diet: you are what you eat. Even earlier, some time during the Zhou Dynasty (100-480 B.C.), nutritionists were made permanent members of the court’s highest medical staff. The guiding model for the treatment of disease was by then well established: proper food and drink form the basis for curing illness.