What is Culinary Wellness?
Culinary Wellness helps us to achieve a positive state of health and wellbeing. For most people wellness can be defined as us benefiting from:
- A strong, capable and healthy body
- A sharp and clear mind
- Sufficient energy to enjoy life
- Sufficient time to pursue our passions and spend time with the ones we love
- A balanced emotional state and a positive outlook on life
Why is it needed?
We are often in a state of illness. Some of the most common symptoms we experience are:
- Body – chronic illness (diabetes, heart disease, IBD, arthritis, Alzheimer etc), obesity, digestive issues, inflammation, poor nutrition
- Mind and emotional state – brain fog, migraines, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, overwhelm, stress, insomnia, poor nutrition
- Energy – fatigue, tiredness, exhaustion, low motivation, poor nutrition
We attempt to bridge the gap between where we are, and where we desire to be health wise, in different ways.
Conventional Medicine:
In conventional medicine the focus is on treating the symptoms of illness. We may get prescribed anti-spasmodic drugs for gut issues, insulin for diabetes, anti-anxiety medication, immune system suppressants, and a host of other medications for different symptoms and conditions. While these may address or suppress the symptoms, they may not address the underlying cause or eliminate the problem completely.
A Holistic Approach:
Whereas in the case of culinary wellness we take a holistic view of illness. We adopt a whole body approach that looks at all aspects of a person’s wellbeing to target illness at the source.
While culinary wellness does not reject conventional medicine, and happily works alongside it to improve the symptoms of illness, we do aspire to reduce you need for medication in the long term.
At the core of culinary wellness is culinary medicine, an emerging field of study, which is defined by Population Health Management(1) as:
Culinary medicine is not nutrition, dietetics, or preventive, integrative, or internal medicine, nor is it the culinary arts or food science. It does not have a single dietary philosophy; it does not reject prescription medication; it is not simply about good cooking, flavors or aromas; nor is it solely about the food matrices in which micronutrients, phytonutrients, and macronutrients are found.
Instead, culinary medicine is a new evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine. Culinary medicine is aimed at helping people reach good personal medical decisions about accessing and eating high-quality meals that help prevent and treat disease and restore well-being.
The Principles of Culinary Wellness
What we eat is not enough so at Jungle Goddess we unite these four principles: culinary medicine, positive mindset, active living and emotional balance to create lifestyle strategies to meet and sustain our health and wellness goals.
A good way of viewing our health is to consider that we exist on three levels. While all three are in balance disease is unlikely to occur. But if one or more are out of balance then it is likely that illness will follow.
Our culinary wellness disciplines support these levels of health in the following ways:
Physical
Culinary medicine provides us with the energy we need to keep active throughout the day. It also provides us with the nutrients needed for growth and repair, and to prevent disease.
Chemical
Active Living aids weight loss, improves muscle strength, boosts your immune system and helps protect against many chronic diseases. It is also worth being mindful of ‘how’ we are working out so that we do not overly stress and strain our bodies creating physical damage.
Psychological
All four culinary wellness disciplines contribute to our psychological level of health. The most obvious being our ability to adopt a positive frame of mind, and being mindful enough of our emotions so that they don’t overwhelm us.
Our diet however also plays a major role in our mental health. A two way connection exists between the gut and the brain, which is commonly referred to as the gut-brain axis. There is a communication network that connects your gut, its microbes and your brain. This allows the brain to regulate aspects of homeostasis (keeping things constant), while gut microbes can actually affect brain function, mood and behaviour.(2)
Physical activity also plays a role as it can help boost self-esteem, mood, sleep quality and energy.
Want to learn more?
Next week we will take a closer look at the field of culinary medicine and how healthy eating can play such a major role in our health and wellbeing.
Reference:
- La Puma, John. “What Is Culinary Medicine and What Does It Do?.” Population health management 19,1 (2016): 1-3. doi:10.1089/pop.2015.0003
- Dr Sanil Rege, The Simplified Guide to the Gut-Brain Axis – How the Gut and The Brain Talk to Each Other, Psych Scene Hub, June 2017, found at: https://psychscenehub.com/psychinsights/the-simplified-guide-to-the-gut-brain-axis/