Our ability to think and act is a reflection of our state of physical and mental health, which has as its foundation the food we cook and eat. You could easily say cooking is what separates man from beast, as it developed as an art along with culture. Appropriate food can continually heal our bodies, as recognised by Hippocrates, who taught that food should be our medicine and our medicine should be food. In most traditional medicine systems, wholefood plays an integral part and common foods are often used for medicinal purposes.

It seems that when people experience health-related issues, they try so many avenues dealing with personal relationship issues, changing careers, medication, counselling etc. Eventually, they come to changing their eating habits. This is really the simplest thing to do to effect change in health. Healthy, natural wholefoods are a major influence on healing and maintaining good health.

What are wholefoods?

By definition, wholefoods are foods in as close to their natural state as possible. For example, an apple is a wholefood as opposed to commercially prepared apple juice, or a bowl of brown rice as opposed to 10-minute white rice. Wholefoods are foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible before being consumed, and retain most, if not all, of their original nutrients and fibre. Wholefoods typically do not contain added ingredients such as sugar, salt or fat. Examples of wholefoods include unpolished wholegrains; fruits and vegetables; legumes; unprocessed meat, poultry and fish; and non-homogenised milk.

A benefit of eating wholefoods is that they retain their natural flavour and, once we get a taste for wholefoods, we notice the full, naturally sweet flavour of many vegetables, grains, nuts and fruits.

Diets rich in whole and unrefined foods, such as wholegrains, dark green and yellow/orange-coloured vegetables and fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, contain high concentrations of antioxidants, fibres and numerous other phytochemicals that may be protective against chronic diseases.

The term wholefood is often confused with organic food, but wholefoods are not necessarily organic, nor are organic foods necessarily whole. The true definition of a wholefood is one that has nothing added and nothing taken away. In practice, this must inevitably lead to a compromise. Because of the lack of basic processing, some wholefoods have a very short shelf life. A processed product with unnecessary additives cannot be classed as a wholefood.

In terms of what is sold in wholefood and healthfood stores, this means the best possible compromise is sought.

The science of wholefoods

Nutrition experts from the Harvard School of Public Health created the Healthy Eating Pyramid. The Healthy Eating Pyramid takes advantage of extensive research and offers a broader guide that’s not based on a particular culture but on the best available scientific evidence about the links between diet and health. The Healthy Eating Pyramid is described in greater detail in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, published by Simon & Schuster (2001).

Long-term studies of thousands of men and women by the Harvard School of Public Health show that those who followed its Healthy Eating Pyramid reduced their risk of heart disease by nearly twice as much as those who followed the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid. Focusing on individual food groups, the pyramid endorses both good carbohydrates (wholegrain foods) and good fats (plant oils) and is designed not for short-term weight loss but lifelong health.