There is no longer any doubt from the medical and nutritional literature that nutrition is the greatest contributor to health and malnutrition the greatest contributor to disease. Hippocrates is quoted as saying, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Athletes and Sports Medicine have been leaders in this arena for decades and the common saying among athletes is: “You are what you eat.” When you think about the fact that the purpose of food is to supply the chemical building blocks for our cells, this becomes apparent. See the articles Understanding Health and Disease and Eating Your Way to Optimal Wellness.

It is not an easy thing to change your lifestyle for many reasons. First, we are indoctrinated through our culture and advertizing to eat foods that are unhealthy for us. So, to make a change you must first educate yourself. Once educated, you must find what motivates you to want to change and then stay motivated as you make the changes. Finally, most people only make long term change slowly, so I recommend changing one thing at a time on a biweekly schedule. And keep it simple.

For the purposes of education and motivation, I have compiled a list of Food and Health Documentaries that I recommend watching on a regular basis. Watch 1 or 2 a week initially. Re-watch them, because they are packed with information. Many can be found on Netflix. Most of the information is excellent and very informative. Educate yourself; it is the best gift you will ever give yourself.

Documentaries

• Fed Up
• Food Inc
• Forks over Knives
• Hungry for Change
• Food Fight
• FrankenSteer
• One Nation Overweight
• Farmageddon
• Food Matters
• Supersize Me
• Killer at Large
• Vegucated
• The Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue
• King corn
• Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
• Dirt: The Movie
• Fresh
• The Garden
• The Future of Food
• The Real Dirt on Farmer John
• Food Stamped

These are but a few. You can find many more on-line. Please educate yourself. All the diseases of aging: High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Arthritis, Stroke, Cancer, Heart Attack, etc. all start long before you ever have symptoms and by the time you do it could be too late to reverse the disease or the damage it has caused. The biggest contributor to these diseases – malnutrition – starts in childhood. The abnormal metabolism this leads to begins in childhood. Thus these diseases of aging start in childhood. And in recent times this has accelerated as evidenced by childhood obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. So, do this for both yourself and your children.