Eating and Healing

Discover neglected wild food sourcesthat can also be used as medicine!

The long-standing notion of food as medicine, medicine as food, can be traced back to Hippocrates. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is a global overview of wild and semi-domesticated foods and their use as medicine in traditional societies. Important cultural information, along with extensive case studies, provides a clear, authoritative look at the many neglected food sources still being used around the world today. This book bridges the scientific disciplines of medicine, food science, human ecology, and environmental sciences with their ethno-scientific counterparts of ethnobotany, ethnoecology, and ethnomedicine to provide a valuable multidisciplinary resource for education and instruction.

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine presents respected researchers’ in-depth case studies on foods different cultures use as medicines and as remedies for nutritional deficiencies in diet. Comparisons of living conditions in different geographic areas as well as differences in diet and medicines are thoroughly discussed and empirically evaluated to provide scientific evidence of the many uses of these traditional foods as medicine and as functional foods. The case studies focus on the uses of plants, seaweed, mushrooms, and fish within their cultural contexts while showing the dietary and medical importance of these foods. The book provides comprehensive tables, extensive references, useful photographs, and helpful illustrations to provide clear scientific support as well as opportunities for further thought and study.

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine explores the ethnobiology of:

Tibetantioxidants as mediators of high-altitude nutritional physiology

Northeast Thailandwild food plant gathering

Southern Italythe consumption of wild plants by Albanians and Italians

Northern Spainmedicinal digestive beverages

United Statesmedicinal herb quality

Commonwealth of Dominicahumoral medicine and food

Cubapromoting health through medicinal foods

Brazilmedicinal uses of specific fishes

Brazilplants from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest

Bolivian Andestraditional food medicines

New Patagoniagathering of wild plant foods with medicinal uses

Western Kenyauses of traditional herbs among the Luo people

South Cameroonethnomycology in Africa

Moroccofood medicine and ethnopharmacology

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is an essential research guide and educational text about food and medicine in traditional societies for educators, students from undergraduate through graduate levels, botanists, and research specialists in nutrition and food science, anthropology, agriculture, ethnoecology, ethnobotany, and ethnobiology.