Food Matters Review: When Doctors say Medication, You say Nutrition

What if these fatalities cited in Food Matters were the result of war, social unrest, natural disaster, or terrorist attacks? Wouldn't the masses urgently take to the streets demanding answers from their leaders to clamp down on the carnage? So why haven't these numbers bothered the American people for decades?

Cause of Death in the USA	Number of Deaths Per Year
Heart disease	652,486
Cancer	553,888
Adverse drug reactions	106,000
Infections in hospitals	80,000
Unnecessary surgeries and hospital errors	39,000

The root causes of these deaths boil down to two leading factors: bad food and bad medicine. That's a fatal mix, and it is interesting how we cannot separate food from medicine.

The ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates (460 to 370 BC) said, “Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates believed the body has the innate capacity to heal itself.

Though modern Western doctors pay lip service to the Hippocratic Oath, there is little evidence that they are true disciples of Hippocrates anymore. As the above quote reveals, nutrition was key to Hippocrates' approach to health and healing.

Dr. Linus Pauling, who earned 48 PhDs and won two unshared Nobel Prizes, said, "Optimum nutrition is the medicine of tomorrow."

On the contrary, the vast majority of doctors receive almost zero training in nutrition as part of health care or medical practice. In fact, most doctors discourage their patients from seeking out nutritional alternatives to prescription drugs, surgeries and other medical treatments.

Modern medicine has largely abandoned Hippocrates for a new and deadly philosophy captured in these few words: “a pill for every ill.” In that vein, medical practice may now be described as the engine and fuel of the sickness and disease industry that we broadly call the Western health care system. That's the take of Food Matters, the 2008 documentary that is bound to be a part of the nutritional health revolution that is now in place.

What is the number one factor that has driven this systemic pendulum swing from food as medicine to pill for health? One of the speakers in the 2008 documentary Food Matters put it this way: “Good health makes a lot of sense, but it doesn't make a lot of dollars.” Thus MONEY is the one-word explanation, though "medical science" is the official platitude that doctors would rather use to keep their multitudes of patients waiting in doctors' offices and firmly anchored to medicine cabinets.

A tag team of pharmacologists and physicians have crowned finance the prince of healthcare. Not only do pharmaceutical companies fund the education of doctors along with medical research and medical journals, but profit-driven pharmaceutical companies all but bribe medical doctors to prescribe their endless lines of advertised drugs.

The love of money having hijacked health care, heart disease and cancer have become the top killers in the United States. Both diseases mainly result from deficiencies in nutrition, what the documentary calls "mass malnutrition".

Sadly, the health care solutions that American politicians propose or legislate have mostly do with how to give an already overly-drugged population even greater, cheaper access to more drugs. Since "You are what you eat", one would think our government would rather lead efforts at giving us cheaper access to healthy, organically grown foods than securing our fates in the grips of prescription-driven doctors and their drug companies.

If doctors are not in it for their patients, and if public officials can't or won't help, is the public helpless and hopeless in matters of our health care? No! Anyone who watches Food Matters with the desire to improve his/her health will be enlightened and empowered to grab personal healthcare by the horns. I have been on the path to nutritional health since 1998, still find this documentary a powerful tool to tuck into my arsenal. If you're like me, after watching this 80-minute video, you will be highly motivated to take charge of your personal health care for the long haul, regardless of what drug companies, doctors and political leaders do about health care; I mean "disease care".

On the official website, the Food Matters documentary sells for $24.95 plus shipping, but I bought my copy from eBay for less than $15 with free shipping. As one who really wants the healthy life, wen you watch this documentary, it will first anger you, then it will educate and enlighten you, but more than that it could spare you and your loved ones diseases, pains, pills, doctor visits, and surgeries. ~mogama~