Local Foods and Medicines: For the Health of the People and the Planet

Problems - Historical Perspective - Diets a Cultural Perspective - Vegetarian Diets and Soya - Oils and Fats - Benefits of Local Produce - Some Suggestions - References

Having recently given a talk about local foods and medicines, I thought it would be useful to write an article about it, for the benefit of anybody who didn’t make it to the talk. I’ll include some references here too, so you can check sources, and also because a lot of the books and articles make interesting further reading.

Local herbs have always held a particular interest for me; I think their familiarity makes them stick in my mind as first choices when deciding on a prescription. However, they are rarely seen in “over the counter” remedies, and I wonder perhaps if their familiarity makes them seem a little less exciting to many people. Maybe there is an attitude that if a plant sprouts as a weed from your lawn, it cannot have any uses, but that medicinal herbs must be harvested on a far flung mountain top, have unusual looking flowers, and have an exotic name that isn’t easy to pronounce. But as I’ll show, our local “weeds”- Dandelion, Plantain and Nettles, to name a few, are among the best remedies available, and come at a far lower cost to ourselves, and our global ecosystem.

Local foods have also been something I’ve enjoyed for a long time. I grew up reading books like “Food for Free” (1), gathering nettles for soup, eating rabbit pie and making elderflower wine, and wondering why people would buy canned sweetcorn. As I became more conscious of the threats facing our planet, most importantly the risks climate change poses to us, to our food and water supplies, I started to think more seriously about where my food came from. On my degree course, one of the nutrition modules involved choosing and sticking to a challenging diet as a piece of coursework. For example, we choose an anti-candidiasis diet (one with restricted sugar and yeast intake, to reduce an excess of yeasts in the gut flora), or a lactose free diet and followed it for a month. We then wrote about our experiences, particularly the difficulties facing anybody who chooses to change their diet. This was important in our training, as we often have to recommend changes to peoples’ diet, to ensure a full recovery. I chose a ‘local foods’ only diet, restricted to foods from the British mainland, and preferably the most local sources possible. I found the diet very challenging, but ultimately quite satisfying, and in doing it I learned a lot about locally sourced foods, and their health benefits for us.

I’ll discuss firstly the problems posed to us today by our sourcing of foods and medicines, then look at the historical perspective offered by Nicholas Culpepper, who often discussed the merits of local herbs. I’ll discuss a few of the trends I’ve seen in herbal prescribing, and the problems in sourcing more exotic herbs. I’ll also describe briefly the diet of the Inuit, as an example of a diet radically different from our own, dictated by the climate and availability of foods. I think the diets of indigenous peoples can teach us a lot about how to eat healthily, even though they are often radically different from the optimum diets proposed by many nutritionalists. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of meat production and sourcing, and also look at the vegetarian diet, and how it could be improved by being a little more selective about food sources. I’ve read a lot about sources of oil for cooking, and have found this to be one of the hardest ingredients to source locally, so I’ll describe the options I found available. Finally I’ll describe the problems of our reliance on imports, and discuss some possible solutions.

Problems

I think the best known problem with our food sources is “food miles” something we read about regularly in the papers, connected to our concern over CO² emissions. The measurement of carbon emissions is a popular and easy marker of environmental impact, but the story does not stop there for our health, or that of our ecosystem. The damage to our own health comes from the lack of nutrients in food that is not fresh, from chemicals and processes used to preserve it, and even from the inhalation of exhaust fumes and brake dust from millions of planes, lorries and ships used to move such heavy, perishable produce around. I also wonder about how nutritionally beneficial it is for us to be eating food out of season, and whether this does not also have the effect of further severing us from an appreciation of the seasons. Living as we do in centrally heated houses, driving to work in air-conditioned cars, we barely even have to be rained on, but we can eat tropical fruit whenever we want. But there’s a satisfaction in getting a bit closer to nature, and to the environment in which we live, that brings with it a new appreciation for our natural surroundings. I don’t think that our imports of produce are in any way sustainable either, and I expect that as fuel costs continue to rise, we will perhaps see a revival of our local produce. It has already been taken up by supermarkets as a marketing plan, but the way they do it disappoints me - the “local” option is invariably more expensive – strange, considering it should not have travelled so far - and comes with twice as much waste packaging, in some effort to convince us it must have greater value.

Herbs sourced abroad face the same problems of freshness and “medicine miles”, and also a concern over their harvesting. Are they gathered in the wild, and endangered as a result (2)? Or are they grown in massive industrial farms to keep up with demand, sprayed heavily to protect the vulnerable monoculture from disease (3)? The pharmaceutical industry is no less of a problem to the environment - in fact it’s impact is massive, making herbs by comparison an extremely earth friendly choice (4), as well as being considerably cheaper than synthetic drugs.

Historical Perspective

Nicholas Culpepper’s Herbal (5) is full of jokes and anecdotes that demonstrate his awareness of the problems with importation even in his time. He often said that “far fetch’d and dear bought is the best for ladies”, mocking the upper classes for buying the exotic imports when local herbs offered an equal or better medicine. He campaigned for the rights of the common people, in particular by translating a number of medical texts and pharmacopoeias (books about medicines) of his time from Latin - much to the outrage of the established medical profession, in order to make the principles of medicine more accessible to those without an expensive University education (6).

I think it is worth establishing before I continue that Culpepper is a reliable source, and that despite his not having access to the chemical analysis and clinical trials used today, he did in fact have a very thorough understanding of the uses of plants, in part through the generations of observation and practice passed down to him, and also through an empathic means of studying the plants, widely used before the advent of clinical science. This method is well described in Stephen Harrod Buhners book “The Secret Teachings of Plants” (7). An example of the accuracy of Culpeppers’ work is seen in the case of Wormwood - Artemisia vulgaris, the seeds of which he describes as a treatment for worms. This is in fact spot on - the plant contains essential oils that are highly toxic to intestinal nematodes, the term used by herbalists today is “anthelmintic” (8). I suggest further that the seeds are the very best part of the plant for this purpose, as swallowed whole, they will release their active constituents further down the GI tract, providing the best means of administering them, and getting the best effect from the least dosage.

In reference to wormwood, Culpepper shows more of his understanding of the benefits of local plants. He explains that of the three common varieties, Sea Wormwood is the most popularly recommended, but that it is the weakest. So he recommends it to people of a weaker constitution, or to those who live by the sea, for whom it will be the better remedy as it is “nourished by the same air”. This understanding of people’s differing constitutions, varying with the individual and the climate in which they live, is something common to all traditional medicines, and sadly missing from the biomedical model of modern Western medicine (9). Culpepper often mentioned how each local climate would precipitate certain illnesses, and England, being cold and damp much of the year, encourages coughs and colds, particularly in the winter months. However, in each place, he suggested, you would find the remedies for its ailments, and England is well supplied with cough and cold remedies such as Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and Elderflowers (Sambucus nigra). He even recommends a herb used as a preventative over the winter months - Marigold (Calendula officinalis) - much as people take Echinacea today. In fact, given that this is not the traditional use of Echinacea, nor is it supported by clinical evidence (10), I suggest that Marigold is a far better choice of herb for this purpose.

So perhaps these local herbs can provide us with far more exciting medicine than we give them credit for, and it is time to look to the weeds in our gardens, and common plants of the hedgerows to stock up our medicine cabinets. They can be gathered fresh, and dried with care, preserving all of their active principles. Teas made from these plants may be far more effective than over the counter preparations of exotic plants, which are often found to contain little or none of the plant listed on the bottle (11). One has only to read the ingredients list of a tincture in Holland and Barret, and see caramel colouring listed as an ingredient to realise there can’t be much herb in it - otherwise why would they have to colour it?

Diets- a Cultural Perspective

Diet is also central to our health - more so than medicines, in fact, as with a sound diet and good exercise, one should have little use for stronger medicine. Hippocrates said “let food be your medicine”, as according to him “medicines purge an age”, - he considered it important to maintain one’s health with the gentlest means. Many of our herbal medicines are also well known as foods, such as Garlic, Oats and even Nettles, so perhaps the difference should be seen as continuous, simply a matter of potency and dosage.

Looking at tribal diets, we can see that they differ widely from the “optimum” diet suggested by Western nutritionalists (12). The Inuit diet for example contains little fruit and veg, but a very high proportion of meat, fish and animal fat (13). However, the Inuit are found to have an extremely low incidence of heart disease, despite possibly having a genetic predisposition to it (14)! This cannot be entirely to do with the fish oils included in their diet, not when one considers the extreme quantities of meat and animal fat eaten, their levels of obesity and high proportion of heavy smokers. I suggest that we can look at this another way: in the terms of traditional medicine. The philosophy of traditional medicine describes foods according to their effects on the body, for example some foods are considered heating, others cooling. This way of describing foods and medicines is found in Chinese medicine (15) and Western Humoural theory (6), as well as a number of other medical philosophies from across the world (9), being a simple and practical way of describing and predicting observable phenomena. In these terms, meat, and particularly salted meats are considered to be very heating food, and excess of which might be expected to lead to hot illnesses such as high blood pressure, anger and insomnia (15). However, the native environment of the Inuit is extremely cold, so I suggest that their diet is a necessity for them to thrive in such a place. It happens that their surroundings furnish them with exactly the kind of foods they need to cope with its extremes. I think that if we were to look closely at the diets of indigenous people from across the world, from both a scientific and a holistic perspective, we might see a pattern, with diets that vary widely in their makeup, yet provide all the nutrients, and the right balance of ‘heat’ and ‘cold’ to support the people who live their lives completely immersed in all sorts of extreme natural climates.

So what inferences can we draw from this about our own diet? We live in a damp, temperate climate, with a range of weather through the year, and our lifestyles are for the most part protected from the elements by central heating and roofs. Few of us work a very physical job. With this in mind, I suggest a diet based on our excellent local vegetables, with salads when in season (the hotter time of the year is the ideal time for such light, cooling foods), and plenty of hot, cooked dishes over the winter, In fact, we should only have to look back to the diet of a hundred years ago, to get some ideas for a tasty, satisfying diet that varies through the year. Blackberry crumble in autumn is ideal! Likewise, Lancashire hotpot provides an excellent warming meal in winter. I suggest though that the amount of meat commonly eaten today is excessive, especially for people who do not have a physical job. Farmers toiling long hours in the fields may well be better off for a full English breakfast, but for people whose job features a lot of sitting down, it can’t be a healthy habit.

Vegetarian Diets and Soya

Having said that we eat too much meat in the UK, I think that the vegetarian diet possible today may also benefit from a closer inspection, especially since the increased availability of processed soya products that have become central to the diets of many vegetarians. Obesity is rising throughout the West, and among vegetarians too (16), despite their lower rates of obesity overall (17). The fact is, that even a vegetarian diet can contain calories in excess of energy requirements (18), leading to ill health. I am concerned that modern soya products such as TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein- a form of processed soya waste), “vegetable oil”, and processed soya milks may not be so wholesome as the traditional fermented soya products - miso, tempe, and brewed soya sauce. I wonder if this might be a factor in the conflict of scientific evidence on the health benefits or risks of eating soya products (19). Many of the soya products available today are waste of one kind or another from the production of animal feed - the oil is removed with a solvent (usually hexane) and processed to make it palatable, the lecithin is extracted and purified, for use as an emulsifier in foods, and the meal washed to remove “soya milk” (20). Much of today’s supply of soya is grown in deforested South America, where it has been discovered to grow (with chemical assistance) even after the land becomes too barren to graze cattle - a trend that has increased with recent demand for biofuels (21). Perhaps it would be healthier for both ourselves and the environment if we ate more of our locally available protein sources - the eggs of free range hens (with the best nutrient content- 22), peas and beans. These have been popular alternatives to meat throughout the history of this country, prominent features in the diet of those who could not afford much meat (23).

As well as being a potential concern in the diet of vegetarians, there is no doubt that soya feeds are harming the health of livestock, and eventually our own health as a result. This is mainly to do with the balance of omega fatty acids present in the meat, and the proportion of n-3 to n-6 fatty acids (“essential fatty acids”- formerly nutritionalists were concerned about overall deficiency in the diet, it now seems that the balance is more important than the quantity), which is found to be radically different in animals fed on processed feeds. The balance in pastured animals is much more appropriate nutrition for humans (24, 25, 26). Of course, the main reason for feeding animals soya is to reduce costs, and meet the demand of a society that eats a great excess of meat. So I recommend to meat eaters that they spend the same amount on meat, but buy only free range organic meat, and eat vegetarian meals the rest of the time. The benefits of eating less meat are well established (17), but I think that a little meat can be high quality food, if you chose the right source. I wonder if the evidence against a non-vegetarian diet seems so bleak in part because of our industrial methods of raising livestock. These have been the norm over recent years, the same years over which vegetarian and conventional diets have been assessed scientifically.

Oils and Fats

While I was doing my local foods diet at Uni, I found that one of the hardest things to source was oil for use in cooking. I found that the three basic options available were butter, animal fat such as lard, or nut and seed oils. Of the seed oils, the only kind I found that was grown in the UK was hemp oil from Yorkshire, and while it seemed a really healthy option, it was also extremely expensive. The remaining two did not seem to be healthy choices at all at the time, but since reading a bit around the subject, I’m less inclined to write them off as harmful, and blindly accept vegetable oil as the healthy choice. I read about the nutrient content of butter, and that it contains an anti-cancer compound not found in vegetable sources (27), as well as Vitamin A, Vitamin E and beta carotene - and the vitamins are of course far more concentrated in butter made from the milk of grassfed cattle (28). The benefits of grassfeeding in improving the n-3 to n-6 fatty acid balance of milk will also be found in butter, making it quite a nutritious food. It can be made into ghee (claried by simmering off the water content), a more convenient form of the oil for cooking, and as it contains a high proportion of saturated fats, it will not form the peroxides and free radicals made in a heated vegetable oil, and has a higher smoke point. While scientists have speculated that it must be harmful because of its content of saturated fats and cholesterol, it has actually been found to lower cholesterol in the blood (29), supporting the long tradition in India that ghee is a wholesome food and a medicine.

Lard and dripping used to be the most commonly used cooking fats in the UK, but became less popular since research appeared showing that saturated fats in the diet led to heart disease. However, this movement resulted in the popularity of margarine, and other foodstuffs containing artificially hydrogenated trans-fats, and these have been found to be considerably more dangerous than the saturated fats they replace (30). Some evidence has even appeared contradicting the association between saturated fat intake and heart disease (31, 32), so I suggest that cooking your roast potatoes in free range goose fat might not be so bad for your health after all.

Finally, the seed and nut oils are excellent sources of vitamins and essential fatty acids, hemp oil in particular having quite a good balance between n-3 and n-6. However, they are very expensive, at least if you buy good quality oils, and they are not well suited for use in cooking, as the polyunsaturated oils are so delicate and easily damaged by heat. They are delicious on salads, so I suggest keeping them for making tasty, nutritious dressings. When it comes to cooking oil, I’d avoid cheap sunflower oil, and similar vegetable oils. The extraction process uses hexane as a solvent (although it is mostly evaporated off), then the oil must be bleached, deodorised, and usually treated with an antifoaming agent (33) – hardly a health food! I think homemade ghee, made from organic butter, represents a much healthier food than this.

Benefits of Local Produce

Locally grown vegetables and fruit, eaten in season, are in my opinion the central part of a healthy diet. Far from limiting one’s choice, the seasonal variety actually brings more variation and new flavours to your cooking. We are lucky in Cambridge to have the vegetable stall on the Sunday market - the produce is very varied indeed, almost all from the same farm near Littleport. Compared to the “usual” vegetables - carrots, frozen peas, dutch peppers and iceberg lettuce, our seasonal delicacies - purple sprouting broccoli, sorrel, leeks, celeriac and spaghetti marrows - offer a wide range of new textures and flavours to experiment with in the kitchen.

Apart from the culinary appeal, fresh, ripe veg grown nearby has by far the best nutritional content, as many of the vitamins they contain degenerate with age (12). In addition to this loss through oxidation, many vegetables intended for export are harvested unripe, stored in an inert gas, and later “gas ripened” (34). This process cannot allow the full development of nutrients in the plant, and may explain in part why organic vegetables are found to contain far more vitamins (35)

Another benefit of eating seasonally is the sense of connection with the land, and the climate we live in. It is an opportunity to become closer to nature, and appreciate the seasonal cycle of our country. One might point out the lack of fruit year round as a problem, and ask how we are to eat our “five a day” without fruits. But I don’t think this is a problem. Essentially, fruit from abroad is a sugary snack, bathed in fungicide to extend the shelf life, irradiated, and coated with insect wax - no doubt better than a chocolate bar - but is it a necessity? The inhabitants of this county (and most others) have lived well for many years eating fresh fruit only when seasonal, so I’m sure we can do the same.

Some Suggestions

So what solutions can I suggest to our society’s dependence on importation? Growing your own is an obvious choice, if you have a garden or allotment, it can be a satisfying hobby with real health benefits. Wild-gathering may also be an enjoyable and educational way to stock up your larder- “Food for Free” is the definitive textbook of this art (1). There are plenty of things available in the countryside that it would be nearly impossible to gather to extinction, yet offer delicious, highly nutritious food. Dandelions and Nettles are a good example, or free-range rabbit, if you know a landowner with a pest control problem. The Sunday market in Cambridge (and others like it across the country) are good places to get organic produce direct from the grower, at prices which compete with the cost of conventional produce in a supermarket. And for maintaining your health, if all this local food isn’t quite enough, there are plenty of safe, effective local herbs with which to stock your medicine cupboards, remedies that promote your health far better than painkillers. Or for more complicated complaints, there are herbalists across the UK - you can find your nearest herbalist in the NIMH directory (36).

In conclusion, foods and medicines transported from the other side of the world make a huge dent in the global ecosystem, and we all suffer reduced health from their nutritional deficiency, and from the petrochemical emissions of the thousands of planes, lorries and ships needed to move them around. Humanity as a whole faces its greatest challenge from global warming, so I hope that a revival of local foods and medicines will help us to overcome these problems. Fortunately, it seems that the escalating cost of fuel, and therefore foods that have been imported, may assist such a revival, and we may soon see local foods and medicines become much more widely available.