sidenotes

(Photo from Lucas Olivet)

I’ve been thinking a lot about medicine lately, the multifarious forms it can take.

There’s plant medicine which, in itself, contains legions: the pocket-size bottle of alcohol-extracted rosemary, milky oats, the mug of wild rose petal tea, the time spent in repose beneath cedar, linden, pine. There’s story medicine, the unearthing of our ancestors’ stories, listening, the writing, or speaking, or singing of our own. There is medicine in sharing our lived experience, in connecting with those who have lived something similar. (The #MeToo movement as one example, AA as another, books clubs, open-mic nights, the list goes on).

When most of us think of medicine, we think of hospital medicine, and pharmaceutical medicine, and therapeutic medicine, and those can all be needed modalities, indeed. But they should not be mistaken for gospel, for the only forms. There’s also music medicine, and dancing medicine, and laughter medicine, and gathering medicine, and kitchen medicine (the list goes on).

I’ve been thinking a lot about kitchen medicine, in particular, lately and the following quote:

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Attributed to Hippocrates and found nearly everywhere: on menus of smoothie bars and raw food cafes, the labels of chocolate bars, kombucha bottles, the about me sections of whichever wellness-expert-du-jour.

I’ve been thinking about what eating healthy has come to mean, what it means to me.

I haven’t spent as much time on this project of sharing recipes, perspectives on food as I’ve felt put off by the shape kitchen medicine has taken. The zucchini-noodle bowl, the avocado toast, the raw “cheesecake”. The coconut fat ball, the collagen latte, the 8-dollar to-go cup of broth.

The convergence of wellness with lifestyle has complicated what was once simple (eat your vegetables, move around, don’t eat too much sugar, give thanks), rendering it nearly beyond recognition. The idea of eating clean has, of late, been tarnished and every wellness-guru worth her weight in Himalayan salt has distanced herself from it. However, wellness, or eating healthy, or, put more simply, nourishing oneself is still being conflated with things like sherbet-hued yoga tights, impossibly tiny wooden spoons, a spotless kitchen inlaid with bleached tiles, ombré, and, more often than not, complicated recipes that require expensive tools (the vitamix, the dehydrator) and expensive, imported ingredients.

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine by thy food.”

This maxim’s meaning has, for the most part, been lost; I highly doubt Hippocrates was talking about week-long green juice cleanses and “moon dusted” mugs of hot almond-water.

But, more than that, this maxim has always felt a bit one-note.

Just as there’s not just one type of person, there’s not just one type of medicine either. (Thankfully!) And while I can get down with the importance of eating nourishing meals, I can’t groove with the fixation on superfoods, on super dogmatic diets, on this version of wellness that is, quite frankly, monochromatic, without room for nuance, other perspectives and also pretty limiting and sometimes downright wrong (for example: vegetable juice cures cancer! coconut oil will help you lose weight! cooked foods are poison! vegan “cheese” is an abomination! [ok, that last one may be true]).

I’m not interested in recipes with precise instructions, imported ingredients. I’m not interested in “props”, or a hundred splashy photos of the same damn thing. I’m not interested in selling a lifestyle, one way to be well, one kind of medicine.

I am and always have been an intuitive cook, setting out a bowl of rice, or beans to soak for the next day, seeing what vegetables I have on hand to use, or going to the market for some eggs, or a cut of meat. The recipes I enjoy read more like stories than instructions. They make use of what is growing in my region. They’re simple, made with humble things–turnips, the patch of backyard nettles, butter, chicken feet–, things that may not be as sexy as açai, but are nourishing to, not only me, but my community, too. Kitchen medicine is one part of being well, but it’s certainly not the only, or even most important one.

So on this new (Gregorian) year, I offer this new maxim:

“Let our medicine be our medicine and our food be our food.”

Maybe you’re big into kitchen medicine and your medicine happens to be your food. Maybe that will shift and you’ll find your medicine elsewhere. Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot about where kitchen and story medicine converge lately and I’m looking forward to sharing more of that here soon.

These past few weeks, I’ve been taking a break from a dear old friend. A friend that, through the years, I’ve gotten to know pretty well, intimately, even, as this friend has taken up residence with me in various cool, dark corners for going on two years, now. Her name is kombucha, or ‘ booch as I sometimes affectionately refer to her, and she’s been a presence in my life since I first became interested in health-food. You probably already know her pretty well.

Tides are turning, and more and more folks are becoming interested in alternative paths toward wellness and in health-food especially. Kombucha, an effervescent beverage made from fermented tea, is no longer relegated to the shelves of your neighborhood’s organic co-operative grocer, or the back of your hippie friends’ fridge but has become a veritable staple in supermarkets, cafes and even the occasional gas station convenience store.

Tides are turning, and as the demand for information on health-food increases, the spotlight on those sharing that information does, too. Recently, in the article “Green is the New Black: The Rise of the Healthy-Eating Guru”, the credibility of a few superstar nutrition-and-food personalities, or, to use the author’s word, gurus has been called into question, with the author pointing to many of these gurus’ lack of credentials to discredit their advice.

Go gluten-free! Juice your greens! Swap cow’s milk for nut milk! Drink kombucha!

The author finds fault with these commands, as they are typically issued without substantiation by scientific research and by individuals without a scientific designation. I find faults with these commands as they are just that–commands–which remove the possibility for conversations.

It’s undoubtedly important to be well-versed in the subject on which you are offering public advice. However, I feel the real issue (which the author neglects to mention) is that so many of us remain unversed in the subject of nutrition which is, when you think of it, one of the most essential and relevant subjects we can ever learn! What other subject serves to keep you and your family and, even, in a broader sense, your community healthy through all life’s ebbs and flows?

The other issue, as I see it, is that most of us have relied on the advice of allopathic medical experts for so long that even when we begin to seek an alternative path to wellness we do so within the same paradigm: We choose a personality–an expert or guru–and follow their commands without question or conversation.

Drink kombucha.

A few weeks ago, I started to notice that I was feeling a little out-of-it after drinking my habitual glass of the ‘booch. Nothing had changed–my scoby was healthy, my recipe and process were the same as they’d been for the past two years–but, still, something seemed off.

And yet, I continued to drink it. Because it’s a health-food. Because it contains probiotics. Because the nutritionists I admire recommend it. Because my teachers told me to. The idea that kombucha can be at once a fundamentally healthy beverage and at the same time an “unhealthy” choice for me, at this moment, was challenging to accept.

I have an education in nutrition that the author of the aforementioned article would find lacking. I’m no dietician, but I did study nutrition for a full-year academically and for many years prior personally. I didn’t enroll in my studies to become a guru, but to better learn what health-food means to me, for me, through all life’s ebbs and flows. This knowledge empowers me to ask questions, to start conversations, to come to my own conclusions and to share what I’ve learned with others.

So I started a conversation: I’ve lived in Switzerland for almost a full-year now. I can feel, at times, anxious, and as I’ve found myself more and more settled here I’ve found this anxiety increase. I’ve lived in many places, but never w/ the idea of staying put, and it’s been both a lovely and terrifying experience. Kombucha is a stimulating beverage–I make mine with un-smoked lapsang souchong tea– and I realized that it was contributing to my anxious feelings.

And so I stopped. I made the best choice for myself in that moment by shifting from observing command to starting to question, to converse.

Tides are turning, and there’s a need now for more conversation and less commands. The rise of the healthy-eating guru points to something far more significant than a few individual personalities. It points to the fact that people are eager to learn about food and explore their relationships to it. Instead of condemning the interest in health-food, I say we take nutrition out of the hands of the experts and/or gurus and place it back in our own.

After all, they’re the ones that feed us through all life’s ebbs and flows.

The Soaked Bean

Seeking Nourishment, Finding Traditions

Kitchen Medicine: Letting Go of Old Maxims, Cooking Intuitively

Kombucha + New Conversations on Nutrition