Power From the Kitchen
By: Jeannie Fitzpatrick
There is no better time to talk food than November. Traditional Thanksgiving dinners are about to fill homes with scents of sage, rosemary, and thyme. Those same kitchens and scents will collect curious family members ripe for conversation. When it comes to healing our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health the kitchen is one of the areas where we hold tremendous power.
There has never been a greater interest in transforming eating habits and kitchens than is found in the American society today. The Standard American Diet has become more about the consumption imitation flavors, color additives, high fructose corn syrup and other added sugars, preservatives, chemical flavor enhancers and pesticides which have hijacked the flavors, simple pleasures and gatherings that good food foster. While it seems to require a degree in chemistry to understand a food label, it is great incentive to begin changing food habits and taking back the power of healing which hides in your kitchen!
Those very flavors and scents, common to this time of year, present the perfect backdrop for change. Getting back to the basics of flavor will arm you for success! After all, the smell of a favorite cookie or favorite meal baking is not unlike the song playing on the radio that takes you on a journey of “remember when”. Incorporating spices adds healing elements to our foods across the healing perspectives. Medical doctors, Native American healers, and Ayurvedic healers have utilized herbs and spices for centuries in medicinal applications. Modern medicine has and continues to look to herbs and spices to explore pharmaceutical applications. Emerging interests and research in essential oils offers further confirmation that your spices are your kitchen’s first power source.
“Let Food be Thy Medicine and Medicine be Thy Food” (Hippocrates). Hippocrates, considered to be the father of modern medicine was also the first doctor to note that health and healing are the product of environmental factors, diet and living habits.