Health Update: Health Update: How food shapes our health more than medicine. Doctors share healthy eating tips – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
Our health is shaped by far more than what happens in a doctor’s office. Research estimates that as much as 80 to 90 per cent of health outcomes are influenced by factors outside medical care, including diet, physical activity and other everyday habits.
Yet food, one of the most powerful drivers of health, is rarely treated as medicine.
The concept of food as medicine is not new, says Dr Jaclyn Albin, an internist and director of the culinary medicine programme at UT Southwestern Medical Centre in the US state of Texas.
“They found that people who were delivered healthy meals … stayed out of the hospital,” Albin says. “They lived longer. They felt better. Imagine that: a healthy meal helps you heal. It brings longevity and comfort in a sickness.”