December | 2016 | Si'Mama Cafe

“Let food be your medicine.” Hippocrates

A few decades ago when I was facing American culture shock, I only could see things happened at the surface level, but many years later I understood the root cause of them. For example when I just arrived, everybody talked about egg yoke like it was a monster. I loved egg yoke and continued to eat it almost everyday, but I was confused and waiting to see if something happened to me after not being so careful about this monster. After a few months, sugar, coffee, nuts, butter, wine, wheat and bread each got their share of being introduced as a monster. After years of research and following up with these fear induced news about food, I realized how much of that was the result of politic, economy, pharmaceudical companies’ benefits and they were not an unbiased science.

Financial incentives made good food look like a monster for a while and then a few months later their harm was denied by the same media and they jumped into destroying the reputation of another good food. All these confusions happened, while the real health threats like GMOs, chemicals, preservatives, and additives not only didn’t have any warnings, but they were casually excused from showing up on the food lables. Butter that was not butter, sugar that was not sugar, yellow water called nonfat milk, and medicine taste nonfat yogurt replaced the real food in the market. “You are what you eat” and no wonder that as much as the food market was more and more saturated with these fake and so called “healthy ingredients”, people became unhealthier and unhealthier. At the same time real healthy food that has been around for centuries and were both food and medicine have been pushed away by so many expensive rules and regulations for organic farming, natural, seasonal, and local produce, which resulted in real food become more expensive and less accessible and people were less informed of the truth about real food. In all fourteen countries that I have lived short or longterm, people were healthier and happier just by eating variety of fresh real and natural, seasonal, and local food in moderation.

“Let’s always eat and drink healthful food and beverages and do it in moderation.” Dr. Sii