Letting Your Diet Be Your Doctor

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine shall be thy food." Spoken by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates and quoted in the movie Food Matters, this was the resounding message during a screening of the film held Thursday, October 19, in the Student Activities Building.

The film stirred a contentious debate among students in attendance.

Hosted by the Health and Nutrition Sciences Club, the film's main message was meant to instruct viewers on what, or who, is making this nation sick, and what we can do about it.

David Wolfe, a revolutionary of the raw-foods movement and well-known speaker on the subject featured in the movie, proposes that America should follow this system of eating mostly raw, organic foods.

Despite the beneficial nature of the diet of nutritious fruits and vegetables he advocates, Wolfe also has a reputation as a controversial figure. Many of the points he made in the film raised objections from students.

For example, Wolfe claimed that cooking foods 'kills' them, ridding them of their vitamins and minerals. Therefore, 51 percent of our diets should be uncooked raw foods. This means that most of what we eat is not benefiting us in any way except for the calories it provides.

Wolfe also suggested to drink one to two liters of water in the morning before we eat anything else. The rationale is that all the toxins in our body will be flushed out before they can be released through the skin or manifested through the body in other ways.

He went as far as to claim that drinking several liters of water every morning and throughout the day can help someone lose fifteen pounds per day.

These claims appeared too outrageous to be true, and perceptive students determined that taking such drastic measures was not the only way to live healthily.

With plenty of dramatic shots of food consumption, along with tense scenes of medications being poured from pill bottles and many serious questions being raised to the few nutritional specialists interviewed, viewers were told that vitamins are actually good for you, yet doctors tell us otherwise.

The film dedicated a lot of time to defaming drug companies as a source of continued disease and sickness, both in this country and around the world.

Food Matters demonstrated that despite a lack of evidence of negative side effects, vitamins are not recommended by doctors to their patients, and they are even told that vitamins can be dangerous in large amounts.

Doctors do this, in the film's opinion, because of a coordinated effort with drug companies to continue to make money. They invest in the need people feel to get their aches and pains cured fast, and in lieu of proper sustenance provided by vitamins, they guarantee that their medications will do just that.

The movie continued to suggest that drug companies keep people ill and buying their products through manipulation of the public's respect for doctors, along with manufacturing drugs ill-equipped to treat chronic diseases.

The film certainly left students with plenty of food for thought. President of the Health and Nutritional Sciences club Doha Salem, in her response to watching the film for the first time, said, "I believe in the [Hippocrates] quote. I live by it."

Other students responded to the film's message in similar ways. "I thought it was enlightening and presented different views that aren't traditionally thought of," said Sylvia Pong, BC sophomore nutrition major.

"The message of being your own doctor was helpful and inspiring, " said junior health science major Melissa Jean-Baptiste

It seemed to be an obvious fact, especially in this day and age, that we should keep ourselves healthy by eating nutritious things, but instead it came off as a profound idea in its simplicity for students.

As the film reiterates, we still must continually ask ourselves, "Why haven't we all been doing this before?" and most fundamentally, "Why are we still sick?"