October 6, 2016
Dear Division 16,
We have been exploring, through our Theme Books, our relationship to food and starting to think about local and global food issues. I think this article is a nice combination of global and local.
Once you’ve given it a read, think about what you know about food as medicine. You can either respond from your own experience or do a little bit of internet research to answer the following question:
What is one example of food that people use for medicine? Please be clear in your response about: what the illness is that the food is treating, specifically what food is used as medicine, and what the effect of the food is on the human body.
For example, if I were using this article, I might respond:
“In Bangladesh, but probably other places around the world as well, drinking water is unsafe. Well water can sometimes be contaminated with arsenic, which is poisonous for humans. Lentils that are being grown in Saskatchewan right now have higher levels of Selenium, which helps the body eliminate arsenic. When people eat the lentils, it reduces the amount of arsenic in their bodies and makes them healthier”
Or, if I were using my own experiences, I might write:
“Whenever I get a cold, I also get a bad cough. My friend has always encouraged me to drink a tea made from lemon, ginger, honey and cayenne pepper. When I boil these in water and drink them, I find that I cough less frequently and that I feel better overall. I think that it soothes my throat and helps my immune system to get stronger, and I know that lemons have vitamin C.”
I look forward to your responses,
Jody
Divisions 17 and 18 
One of the biggest topics right now related to food and medicine is Marijuana. This might not be a food but it is pretty close. Marijuana helps a type of cancer I think. I have never used marijuana but but when I was reading the article this is what I thought about.
Thanks for this, Touchdown. You’re right, it’s not a food in and of itself, but it is a medicine in Canada. Can you think of a food that is used for medicine?
One thing that can also help a sore throat along with ginger is honey. Honey can be used in tea and other medicines
I also heard marijuana is not necessarily good for you.
Really! I didn’t know that thanks!
An edible flower that’s also used as medicine is the Cutleaf coneflower. The Chippewa used this flower in a compound poultice to soothe burns. They also used the roots for indigestion.
That’s very cool and I love how it can be used internally and externally, but is it also food? Please explain
an indian healing vegetable known as “Kanchani” or Turmeric, this vegetable was eaten by indian cultures to stop many diseases and is still used today, it can cure (but not limited to) Inflammation, DNA Damage, Oxidative Stress,Colorectal Cancer,Breast Cancer,Liver Damage,Alzheimers and Tumors!
thats some impressive stuff!
source: http://www.greenmedinfo.com
Great work, pink pickle! This is a great example and very current! I’ve been hearing a lot about this as well, from friends and the news!
(I pressed send too quickly) can you also describe how one would use turmeric or how it works in the body please?
I don’t know very much about food as medicine but I did like the article. Anyways I have heard that alfalfa sprouts are great because they help lower cholesterol and prevent cancer. Another healthy food is beets. Beets have a lot of antioxidants, they also protect against cancer, heart disease and inflammation.
Great response, the engineer! It sounds like you actually do know quite a lot about the subject. Well composed! These are great examples of common food that we all have some experience with.
Wow! That was a great post I liked how you named a food that everyone can relate to.
When I get a cold or a sick throat I either drink onion juice or sometimes I drink warm coke with lemon or ginger or both.Even though onion juice (or water)tastes bad it mostly does help me sooth my throat and it just feels better. And theres also lots of vitamin c in lemons.
I’ve noticed chicken noodle soup is great for helping fight colds and the flu, first off because heat that it puts in your body making you warm helps so your body can use less energy making heat and more energy towards fighting the sickness. Second for some reason steam helps clear your sinuses so that’s a bonus. Plus a great addition is the fact that I haven’t yet met someone non Vegetarian who doesn’t like chicken noodle soup.
Whenever I get a cold I drink lemon and honey which seems to soothe my throat but I’m not entirely sure how it works to fight the cold however. I think it’s originally from the UK as my mum said she had it when she was a kid
Ginger could be used as medicine.
Ginger helps you when your cold.
At Japan there’s a tea bag full of ginger powder and you pour hot water in the cup then you drink it. This will warm your body. Gingers helps you get rid of the cold.
One example of a food that doubles as medicine is yogurt. When my stomach is feeling unsettled. My mom gives me yogurt to increase the good bacteria in my stomach. That good bacteria, acidophilus, helps settle my stomach and improves my digestion. The reason why I prefer yogurt over other medicines is because it tastes good, is less expensive than pharmaceuticals, and doesn’t have any side affects.
I did some research and apparently Fennel helps with intestinal gas and has a calming and relaxing effect on people (http://chirocarehealth.ca/food-as-medicine/healing-foods-from-a-z.html).
When you have Indian food you get fennel seeds after your meal to help you digest and so that you don’t fart a lot.
I know that when my throat is hurting I can drink lemon squeezed into hot water and it normally soothes my throat, as many people have written about already. Many other herbs can also help you through colds, coughs and other sicknesses.Also ginger can help settling the stomach if your stomach doesn’t feel so good. Sometimes people mix salt into warm water and gurgle it in their mouthes and it helps your throat, if its sore.I sometimes do that too.
When my brother has a really bad cough and has a lot of phlegm, my grandma usually mixes ginger, green onion and Chinese red date together some times chicken into a really nice looking soup. It helps my brother to avoid getting sick and helps him stop coughing and get rid of all his phlegm. I’ve tried it once and it actually taste pretty good. Ginger and green onion were believed to warm up the body. The Chinese red date protects the liver and boosts up every function in your body.
When I am sick my Mom gives me lemon honey tea because, lemons are full of vitamin C, which is good for you if you have a cold and honey is smooth and makes your throat feel good, so if you are sick in your throat it makes it feel better.
In my expirience I’ve always been told by my mom to have a little spoonful of honey, to get rid of a soar throat. Most foods scratch your throat, but like The Time Traveller said honrpey is very soft and creamy so it makes your thoroat feel better.
In Chile we use potatoes to bring down a fever. They are peeled and sliced thinly then put across the forehead from temple to temple. The belief is that raw potatoes draw the heat from a fever out. In my family we have used this many times and it really works. It also works for sunburn!
I found out that onions and garlic can be used to stop or lower the chance of getting high cholesterol, a heart attack, hay fever, cancer and inflammation because of the sulfur compounds in them. I found this very interesting because I didn’t know that such terrible things that happen to our bodies could be cured by something so simple.
I find that things like leeks and ginger help heal things involving the sinuses and stomach pains. It’s quite odd that things so simple and easy to obtain, sometimes do a better job at healing you than medicine or pills!
Well when I get a cold or sore throats
I drink hot water with ginger and honey because I the honey softens the pain the the throat and the ginger warms up your body with the hot water so that’s how I get rid of colds and coughs Vietnamese way of treating colds.
Oranges actually help you because of their high Vitamin C content,so eat some when you are sick.
one plant that can help bruises is lavender because they it constricts the blood sells and makes it so that less pain will occur on the bruise also if you keep the lavender a little cold when you put it on there will be less bruising on the affected area .
When we have a bad cough my mom gives me a spoon full of honey with cinnamon in it. Both cinnamon and honey are anti-bacterial and anti-viral plus the honey coat soothes your throat.
A food that helps when you are sick and feeling nauseous is ginger. It helps with the settling of the stomach. You can buy ginger tablets at the pharmacy. In addition ginger ale or bubbly water also helps.Another thing that helps with colds is lots of fresh ginger honey and a chicken bone broth cooked together as a spicy soup (all the fresh ginger makes it spicy).
Apparently a cup of hot water with some cayenne pepper will stop a heart attack but it should only be used in emergency situations.
This summer I had a really bad cough, so my mom taught me to make my own cough remedy. She boiled some water and put some honey in it. The she added a lemon slice and squeezed some of the juice in as well. I was drinking that stuff all the time and my throat got a lot better.
Lavender is a herb as a herb it it also food. My friend has a bottle of extracted lavender. Basically, when you get a cut. You rub a bit of it on your cut and it will sting a bit if it’s infected if it’s not it will just sooth the pain. If it is infected the sting is actually it trying to heal the infection. It’s mostly just really helpful when I get a cut.
I think that ginger is a good medicine because whenever someone in my family gets sick I think they would put ginger in soup or a drink it can help there sickness.