"Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food," wrote Hippocrates in the fifth century R.C.E., and, indeed, from (he very earliest days of civilization, nutrition has fanned the backbone of healthcare. Well before he was writing, obtaining and eating food consumed a vast amount of time and energy, and food and herbs were our first medicine, tried to treat a large number of conditions. It has always been clear, to one degree or another, that food has a medicinal effect, and that a varied diet, rich in natural ingredients, is a prerequisite for good health. From the earliest times, diet became a fundamental part of many therapies, and an integral element of most.

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In The late 19th century, naruropaths drew attention to the use of food and its nutritional elements as medicine, a concept that was not new. hut which had not been acknowledged as a therapy in its own right until that time. Naturopaths used nutrition and fasting to cleanse the body, and to encourage its ability to heal itself. With the development of biochemistry, knowledge about food. its makeup, and the effects that it has on our body became, greater, and the first nutritional specialists undertook to treat specific ailments and symptoms with the components of food.

By the middle of the 20th century, scientists had put together a profile of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, as well as vitamins and minerals, that were essential to life and to health. More than 40 nutrients were uncovered, including 13 vitamins. It was discovered that minerals were needed for body functions, and understanding of the body and its biochemistry grew. In the 1960s, the controversial fields of orthomolecular psychiatry and orthomolecular medicine were defined, and physicians began to treat patients with special diets and supplements, prescribed according to individual symptoms, problems and needs. While conventional medical physicians still, discussed nutrition in terms of basic food groups (only three days of medic school is turned over to the subject), orthomolecular nutritionists were prescribing vitamins in megadoses. Physicians used bio-chemicals to correct nutritional deficiencies they saw as factors in a huge range of physical and mental diseases.

From that lime the field spread from being mainly physician-led dietary therapy, also called clinical nutrition, into a more profound theory of health based on treating the patient as a whole (holistic health), and looking for deficiencies that may be causing illness, which art- specific to each individual.

While- this research into diet was ongoing, however, the average Western diet was on a downward spiral. Modern methods of fanning and production, as well as the huge boom in convenience foods, meant that most of us were getting fewer, rather than more, nutrients from our food, and suite-ring the often long-term consequences of deficiency. Furthermore, an overdependence upon drugs, and physicians, for healthcare, caused most of us to put the responsibility for our- health into the hands of others, which resulted in a lack of objectivity about diet and health, and a loss of intuition about our own bodies.

When we suffer an ailment or an illness, chronic or severe, we trot along to the physician, never stopping to analyze- the- reasons why such illnesses might be occurring. Understanding our own bodies is the fundamental basis of both preventive healthcare and treatment, and by ignoring our body's messages, we are unable to reason when and why we feel good, and when and why we don't. Diet has an enormous impact on our physical and mental health, and the food we eat has both therapeutic and preventive benefits. Only now are we beginning to correlate the fact that our health problems may be caused by the foods we are, or are not, eating.