1015. Food as Medicine

As the saying goes, food and medicine are from the same source, and both can affect the condition of the body. Today, we're going to share with you an article published in the journal Nature Medicine (Venkatesan 2024) that shows how changing your diet can benefit your health.
The concept that diet and nutrition can have a direct impact on human health and disease is not new, but it has recently begun to attract attention again. An unhealthy diet is known to significantly increase the risk of obesity and non-communicable diseases such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In addition, it is said that it may increase the risk of cancer, osteoporosis, cognitive disorders. Access to a healthy diet is one aspect of health management.

According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, there are many diseases and deaths due to diet, and risk factors include high sodium intake (note: too much salt intake because sodium is mainly ingested in the form of salt), low intake of whole grains, and low intake of fruits and vegetables. The EAT Lancet Committee also showed that eating enough plant proteins, unsaturated fats, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and cutting back on meat, refined grains and sugars promotes health and reduces the risk of developing disease.

The concept of managing one's physical condition by controlling one's diet is also called "food is medicine" or "food as medicine." While dietary interventions are often the first choice of treatment, they are rarely actually meaningful. This is because there are many gaps in the evidence, and treatments that have shown health improvement through dietary interventions in clinical trials are still only a few areas.

Clinical studies examining the health effects of dietary interventions are difficult to conduct due to cost, standardization issues, participant compliance, and limited samples. Policies such as subsidizing healthy diets and taxing unhealthy diets are being attempted, but it is also important that there is room for science in interventions and that research has access to such interventions. Especially in this digital age, misinformation is likely to be rampant, and there is a risk of misinterpretation in the absence of solid evidence.

Reference
Venkatesan, P. Food is medicine: clinical trials show the health benefits of dietary interventions. Nat Med 30, 916–919 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02891-1

Contributor, SHIRATORI Sakiko, Information and Public Relations Office