Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty, or forging weapons after the war has already begun.

Huangdi Neijing, 2nd Century BC

You are what you eat.

Unfortunately, modern society has forgotten what, in this day and age, constitutes as real food. Technology, in all of its glory, has not delivered us from epic proportions of disease, the likes of which we have never seen in the history of mankind. In 1900, 1 in 33 people were diagnosed with cancer. As of this writing in 2014, that number is 1 in 3. In the United States alone, more than 25.8 million people have diabetes. That number is expected to double by 2025. These numbers don’t include the millions of undiagnosed pre-diabetics. Obesity has sky rocketed with no end in sight. 1 in 3 of us is now clinically obese. You only need to look back as far as the 1940’s to see that obesity was a rarity as opposed to the norm. Cancer, diabetes and obesity are not viral. They are not contagious.

Modern science (the upside of technology) now reveals the common denominator of all of these forms of disease to be the increased consumption of processed food and refined carbohydrates. Add to this equation the sky rocketing over-consumption of refined sugar coupled with the insidious arrival of the low fat campaign of the eighties and you have the “perfect storm” for an epidemic of sickness and disease. We are 99.9% genetically encoded just as our ancestors of thousands of years ago. This is an inevitable fact and cannot be altered. We simply will never adapt to eating fake food, “Frankenfood” and other food like substances. Our body will not tolerate it. It rebels in the form of all the aforementioned diseases with a fury. Unfortunately, as a society, we haven’t made the connection.

We have strayed so far from the nourishing traditions of our ancestors that we not only don’t remember how to prepare and consume real food, but we have lost our palatability for it as well. None of us can be blamed for this mindset in the light of the hardcore, slam-dunk, hard sell marketing tactics of the corporate food giants and their highly funded accomplices in the popular media. As Nutritional Therapists, we understand that that this model cannot be changed from the top down but from the bottom up, one client at a time. It is our job to lead, support and inspire in a way to produce healthy outcomes for our friends, clients and families through a nutrient dense, whole foods diet. I am excited and look forward to working with each and every one of you towards the optimal and natural state of a healthy and vibrant life that nature intended for all of us to enjoy and celebrate!

Michael Blaustone