👉 Your Food is Your Medicine!

Traditional agricultural practices produced healthier crops and more nutritious food. Intensive agriculture and excessive use of agrochemicals on the other hand harms soil microbial life, the bacteria, viruses, bugs and worms that keep the soil healthy and produce good crops. When soil health goes for a toss, conditions become adverse for the crop, producing a sub optimal harvest and poor quality food. 

Here is another aspect. Crops grown with irrigation on tap, full loads of chemical fertilisers and pesticide use do not experience the healthy stress that comes with exposure to periods of sub optimal water availability or occasional exposures to some disease or pest attack. Such stress forces the plant to produce chemical compounds in an effort to survive. These defense compounds help the plant to fight off pathogens, herbivores, and damage from ultraviolet rays but they are also beneficials to humans.

Flavonoids like Anthocyanins are produced under drought or cold stress. These compounds give fruits and vegetables vibrant colors like the purple of brinjals, jamun and plums and the reds of pomegranates, raspberries and strawberries. Anthocyanins act as powerful antioxidants in the human body, reducing inflammation and cellular damage and mopping up free radicals that can cause cancer. Another compound called Resveratrol is found in red grapes and berries, especially when they are exposed to, cold, wet, or fungal stress. Resveratrol is known for its cardiovascular benefits and anti-aging properties. 

Plants also synthesize another interesting group of compounds called Neurotransmitters. They synthesize these molecules to manage stress and regulate metabolic responses. In the human body they act as chemical messengers performing the crucial function of transmitting signals between different parts of the brain and between the brain and different organs like the eyes or the liver or gut. There is some evidence that compounds found in soybean could prevent cancer. Other research is exploring the possible beneficial effects of phytochemicals found in foods like rice, beans and sugarcane. 

In light of all this, scientists are trying to see whether it's possible to alter diet in ways to include certain foods which have therapeutic properties or other direct health benefits. 

This is interesting since it gives a modern context to what Ayurveda stated hundreds of years ago, that food is the supreme medicine and along with good sleep and lifestyle discipline, one of the three pillars of life. Ayurvedic texts state quite clearly that with a wholesome diet, there is no need for medicine, and with an unwholesome diet, even medicine is of no use!