Ask Yourself: Could You Use Food to Control Disease Instead of a Pill?

The Food Hospital on The Cooking Channel strives to highlight the power of food, treating patients by stressing the importance of diet when attempting to control or eliminate a condition or disease.

Many people believe that we rely on drugs too much in today’s world. The Food Hospital is dedicated to bringing the power of food to light for their patients, encouraging people to use food as a major facet of treatment for various diseases and conditions. In examining the science behind food as medicine, the patients featured on The Food Hospital participate in scientifically conducted experiments to determine whether or not a specific health issue can be helped, or even eliminated, by changing the diet of the patient.

The medical professionals on The Food Hospital are dedicated to advancing the science of food. They are Dr. Giovanni Miletto, GP; Lucy Jones, dietician; and Shaw Somers, consultant general & gastrointestinal surgeon BSc. The hosts are focused on bringing the importance of food and diet into the forefront of modern medicine, instead of being an afterthought, as it currently tends to be in much of the medical world, but to do so in a way that is both practical and professional. Explains Dr. Miletto on The Food Hospital website:

This traditionally marginalised concern plays and increasingly central role in mainstream management of everyday illnesses. While it’s true that ‘nutrition’ can include fad diets and suspect claims made by nutripharmaceuticals, there is a place for a reasonable basis to understanding how nutrition affects our well-being.

People have become consumers and experts of their own health care. This has led to a lack of trust in medical authority at times, often for good reason. But it’s also created a need for people to be more discerning about sources of information and what are legitimate treatments. Especially as many people now pay for health related treatments and advice, this need to establish what is effective is important. As a doctor, you hope to increase your understanding by facilitating a dialogue with people over these issues, like the role of nutrition, but in a way that keeps it grounded in the practical.

Both Common and Rare Conditions Addressed

Viewers will see patients with everyday conditions, as well as conditions not well-known by the public. Tonight, The Food Hospital treats a patient with severe eczema; one with suspected gallstones; and a woman with a rare condition, Fish Odour Syndrome. According to The Cooking Channel:

The Food Hospital experts meet 42-year-old Ellie, who has a rare and traumatising condition called Fish Odour Syndrome. She gives off odours ranging from sulphur to rotting garbage and the reactions she gets have taken her mentally to the brink. By taking her treatment into her own hands and cutting out whole food groups without medical supervision, Ellie's relationship with food has been destroyed and her health has been put at risk. Severe eczema has taken over 16-year-old Toby's life, to the extent that he fears ever being able to fulfil his dream of becoming aeroplane cabin crew through fear of people's reactions to his noticeable, crusty lesions. Thirty-year-old mum Michelle suffers from crippling pain due to suspected gallstones. Can Shaw and Lucy treat her with just food, thus avoiding surgery? Lucy and Gio myth-bust hangover cures with three hard drinking students from Leeds the morning after a big binge drinking session. Plus, Dr Pixie McKenna investigates the truth about health claims on food packaging - does food always really do what it says on the tin?

The Food Hospital airs on The Cooking Channel on Monday nights at 9 p.m. E/T.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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