Food is Medicine: Why What You Eat Really Matters

Around the world, suboptimal diet is responsible for more deaths each year than any other risk factor—more than stress, more than environmental pollution, more than tobacco. Clearly, eating the “wrong” foods can lead to negative health outcomes. 

That’s usually what people mean when they say “you are what you eat.” Highly-processed food, lack of nutrient diversity, and eating foods that you don’t tolerate well all contribute to poor health and faster deterioration of the body.

Luckily for us, the opposite is true, too: a high-quality, diverse diet can lead to positive long-term health outcomes. The same health challenges that are caused by poor diet can be prevented by a healthy and well-rounded diet. Or as we like to say in the Functional Medicine and nutrition world, food is medicine! 

You Are What You Eat: Dr. Christopher Gardner’s Work

Simply put, the food you consume each day has a direct connection to how you feel in the short-term and what your health looks like in the long-term. That’s because the gut regulates “the development and function of the immune, metabolic, and nervous systems,” according to a 2021 study. It also helps facilitate communication with the brain, meaning your gut not only shapes your mood and behaviors, it also plays a role in the development of neurological disorders like ischemic stroke. You really are what you eat!

In recent years, this idea has started to go mainstream, thanks in part to popular research documentaries that examine the health impacts of various diets. Typically, study participants who eat more whole, minimally processed foods show the most improvement in areas like cardiovascular health, insulin, and weight loss, which suggests that for many of us, adding more whole, plant-based foods and limiting ultraprocessed foods can be beneficial (though nutrition is highly personalized, and the same diet won’t work for everyone).

Stanford Medicine’s Dr. Christopher Gardner was featured in one such documentary, Netflix’s You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment. Dr. Gardner, who leads the Stanford Prevention Research Center, has spent more than 2 decades studying nutrition and the impacts of different diets on the body. One of his key areas of interest is the gut microbiome, which he researches through human nutrition interventions like the one featured on Netflix. He also highlights his 2021 “Fe-Fi-Fo” study (Fermented and Fiber-rich Foods) as one of his most impactful: During the 10-week intervention, “study participants consuming more fermented foods increased their microbial diversity and decreased blood levels of ~20 inflammatory markers.” He is currently studying how the maternal microbiome influences infant health.

Studies like Dr. Gardner’s are fueling a growing body of research into the power of plant-based foods and the importance of eating well. These studies show that a largely vegan diet tends to provide more fiber, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, and fewer processed and refined foods, improving cardiovascular health and lowering disease risk compared to a diet containing animal products like meat and dairy.

“Just because a patient knows the health benefits of switching their diet does not mean they will be able to change their habits and food preferences on their own. For that, they need a health coach.”

The health benefits are evident, but Dr. Gardner acknowledges that even for people who want to change the way they eat, actually sticking to these dietary protocols can be challenging. Just because a patient knows the health benefits of switching their diet does not mean they will be able to change their habits and food preferences on their own.

For that, they need a health coach.

FMCA Study and The Health Coach’s Role

Lifestyle changes like adopting a new diet can be incredible tools to cultivate wellness, but for many people, they are challenging to implement and sustain. Unfortunately, most doctors and practitioners who prescribe dietary changes receive minimal formal training in supporting their patients to actually make the recommended changes. 

At FMCA, we know that this is where health coaches can make all the difference, and more and more research backs us up. In fact, earlier this year, FMCA shared the results of a study we conducted in partnership with the Institute for Functional Medicine. The study examined the effectiveness of health coaching for clients attempting to adhere to a particular diet, comparing those who received health coaching with those who attempted to make changes on their own. The study showed that for those who worked with a health coach, both dietary compliance and patient health outcomes improved, compared to those without a coach. Read more about the study here.

Health coaches provide essential support when the path to lifestyle changes inevitably gets bumpy, offering perspective, encouragement, and problem-solving so that clients can stick to their health goals. In our modern healthcare system, this support is a missing piece, largely inaccessible to most patients. As a result, dietary and lifestyle changes that could vastly improve health at a population scale feel out of reach. Research like the studies we’ve discussed here could finally change that, but only if we implement the diet and nutrition insights we continue to gather. And for that, we need health coaches.

Food Is Medicine, But Will We Take It?

The research is only getting clearer: Food is medicine, because what we put in our bodies shapes our health now and into the future. If we want to get healthy, stay healthy, and live longer, healthier lives, we need to commit to “taking our medicine” in the form of a healthy diet, and we need health coaches’ support to do it.