[Video] How the Body Heals Itself With Food

In modern day America, few of us think of food as a healing substance. Millions of people struggle with addictions to sugar and junk food (and the resulting obesity and diabetes), and many of us have an unhealthy sort of love-hate relationship with food: we know we should eat better, but we either can't resist the allure of the junk food that is marketed to us at every turn, or we simply can't afford the higher prices of healthier foods. Our bodies crave salt, fat, and sugar, and the creative geniuses at food manufacturing companies have figured out how to get these substances (or at least their flavors) into just about every type of processed food, making it nearly impossible for us to say no - even when we know we should choose to eat something with more nutritional value instead.

However, if you look at the animal kingdom, you see a different story - at least, in environments where animals are allowed to live in their natural habitat and eat what they want. Most animals in their natural environment will eat what they need nutritionally at any given time.

I see this even with our chickens. For example, when it's cold out, they prefer high-calorie grains to greens and juicy vegetables. However, in the summer, they will eat all the good veggies, fruits and greens they can get! When they're molting and growing new feathers, they will gobble up extra high-protein legumes (peas and lentils) that they don't usually enjoy.

Unfortunately, as humans, we seem to have largely lost the ability to eat intuitively - although I contend that we really just need to break our addictions, and then learn to listen to our bodies again - and this episode of the Doctor's Farmacy explores this topic in more detail, as well as many more elements of how to eat for healing.

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Check out this fascinating interview with Fred Provenza - author of Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom, as well as several other books and hundreds of scientific papers on natural foraging behavior, intuitive eating for good health, and how behavior links soil, plants, herbivores, and humans.

In this video, you'll learn about how modern agriculture has diminished the nutrient content of our food by breeding for yield, appearance, and hardiness rather than nutrition, how the microbiome of the soil-plant web is intricately interconnected in a symbiotic relationship that impacts almost all life on Earth, what animals and children can teach us about eating for nutritional diversity, and why we’re "looking for love in all the wrong places" when it comes to the Standard American Diet. You'll also learn why this diversity is so essential for our planet - and our health, the big problem that is often overlooked when it comes to studying meat eating and health, and much more.

This is a juicy one, so grab a blanket and a beverage and settle in to learn how your body can learn to eat for health and healing!

What You Will Learn:

1. The vital role that plant compounds play in plant, animal, and human health
2. Our modern agricultural practices breed against phytochemical richness in our foods
3. How animals self-medicate
4. The interrelatedness of the soil microbiome and microbiome of plants, animals, and humans
5. How our overreliance on GMO foods have negatively impacted plants natural ability to produce their own herbicides and fertilizers
6. How we grow our food is driving the chronic disease epidemic and eliminating our body’s natural nutritional wisdom
7. Food cravings and overeating are often attempts to correct nutritional deficiencies
8. We’re not just feeding our gut when we eat, we’re feeding every cell and organ in our body
9. Are plants sentient beings?
10. Variations in feedlot meat, different types of grass-fed meat, and plant-based meat alternatives
11. The importance of ecosystem diversity
12. And much more!

I hope you enjoy this unique perspective on food and eating, and that you gain some insights on how to re-train your body to crave foods that are actually good for it!

I thought this would be a fitting topic to wrap up the year, as we all head off to our holiday tables crammed with all sorts of "goodies" that might actually not be so good for us...  :-)

Have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Rose.