When I was a child my grandmother had many healing ways around food and nutrition. She also used many quaint expressions, one of these being "You should not go out until the streets have been aired". After all this time I do not fully understand the meaning of this phrase, and can only surmise its intention. I think she feared that if I or other people went out before the sun came up they would be chilled and in need of some administration. Her greatest recipe for chills being boiled onions and garlic with a small dollop of clarified butter.

The onions and garlic, needless to say, were gathered from her garden, a garden which was nurtured by both my grandparents and attention given to the nourishment of the ground in which the vegetables grew. Not only was great attention given to the soil and its mineralisation but the vegetation was all grown for a specific healing or nourishing purpose. Had my grandmother been born many years previously, I swear she would have been burnt at the stake as a witch as most of her days were spent concocting many recipes which only rested in her head to help, heal and nourish the residents of the village in which she lived.

Onions are one of the oldest known healing plants which have been used in Asia and the Mediterranean since the beginning of history. Within these fascinating bulbs lie many active ingredients including vitamins, potassium, calcium, phosphorus iron, iodine, selenium, essential oils all giving a specific medicinal effect to the body.

Garlic (Allium sativum) is also a very potent herb used in the treatment of many diseases and highly prized in ancient Greece, Egypt and China for its healing properties. Before the arrival of antibiotics, garlic was used to combat infections, particularly in the treatment of coughs, toothaches, earaches and poor circulation. Today it is used to treat more than a dozen major modern health problems including cancer, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, immune-deficiency diseases, infectious diseases and to treat free-radical damage, one of the greatest enemies of modern living.

 During war time garlic was used as an antibiotic and its healing properties have been reaffirmed over and over again, particularly as more drug-resistant bacteria emerge. Researchers at the San Francisco University Hospital in 1994 were amazed to find that garlic killed all of the bacteria tested by them, including drug-resistant ones.

The other expression she used frequently was "Neer cast a clout til May be out" and of course, those of you who know this expression well will find much discourse on whether it is the month that was indicated, or the hawthorn blossom itself. Does it really matter? With the inclement weather conditions which prevail these days, perhaps it is a good idea to take heed of its meaning, whatever the exact interpretation. A favourite recipe at this time was always sulphur and organic molasses. Homeopathic Sulphur is a remedy used for many problems, including skin problems which are worsened by heat and bathing and independent temperaments who have rather weak physiques. Molasses is a rich source of Vitamin B and iron, and provides many other useful minerals and a factor known as 'wulzen factor', a proven remedy for wrist stiffness and arthritis. My grandmothers theory being a good dose of this on one or two occasions cleansed the blood and gave one sufficient nourishment to see one through the Spring which indicated change.

My grandmother has given me much thought as to the many sayings we have around us, that sometimes we, and orthodox medicine choose to ignore to the detriment of our current health and nutritional problems. From the many thousands available I have chosen the following: "And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat". 

As Father Sebastian Kneipp said "Many people died while the herbs that could have saved them grow on their graves".

Dizzy Gillespie was recorded as saying "There have been two great revelations in my life. The first was bebop, the second was homoeopathy".

I keep in my work room a copy of The Essene Gospel of Peace as translated by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely in which we find the instructions of how to obtain a healthy life. Being a colonic hydrotherapist I have many queries from clients as to the benefits of colonic hydrotherapy, particularly as the majority of them experience great opposition to this ancient art, from the medical profession. In the book it quotes "Think not that it is sufficient that the angel of water embrace you outwards only. I tell you truly, the uncleanness within is greater by much than the uncleanness without. And he who cleanses himself without, but within remains unclean, is like to tombs that outwards are painted fair, but are within full of all manner of horrible uncleannesses and abominations. So I tell you truly, suffer the angel of water to baptise you also within, that you may become free from all your past sins, and that within likewise you may become as pure as the rivers foam sporting in the sunlight".

So what has reference to these and my grandmothers quaint ways to do with the language of nutritional healing. Quite a lot for it makes me reflect on the past and makes me see how things have changed both from the language point of view, and certainly from the nutritional and healing point of view.

If we look at the language aspects of the words nutrition and nutritious we will find some of the answers, for example, nourishment, food, sustenance, healthful, beneficial, health-giving, strengthening, wholesome. These in themselves start a new chain of thought and many moments might be gained in understanding the full meaning and implication of what these words actually mean to ourselves and our present living conditions.

It is the perception of what we consider to be health-giving, healthful and beneficial that creates our present state of health or lack of it. How for instance do we interpret the words food and sustenance? Our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet has changed over the decades and much of our dietary requirements today are governed by the current magazine heralding another diet that will make us look beautiful, slim and healthy. Unfortunately, some of these diets include very little sustenance suitable for the development of health and longevity. Media advertising is often responsible for some of the dietary habits we have adopted because we are lulled into accepting the messages beamed out to us. Dietary mistakes have also been handed down by our parents who inadvertently, because of their own parental guidance (or lack of it), may not be aware of the effect upon our bodies.

 "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is probably one of the most famous of sayings. Some of you will also know: "To eat an apple going to bed will make the doctor beg his bread".  Ripe raw apples are one of the easiest vegetable substances for the stomach to digest, the whole process being completed in eighty-five minutes. It also acts as an excellent dentifrice, being a good food that not only cleanses the teeth on account of its juices, but just hard enough to mechanically push back the gums so that it cleans the borders of deposits which rest there.

The acids of a raw apple are not only fully digestible, but even make the eating of other foods more digestible. Hence apple sauce being associated with roast pork and goose. There is also the old English habit of eating either apple pie, or raw apples with cheese. It is also said that ripe juicy apples eaten at bedtime every night will cure some of the worst forms of constipation. Unfortunately sour apples are the best for this purpose, and probably not to the taste of most people suffering from this affliction.

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".  How mentally stimulating is this phrase when we hear it, particularly in the song version with its catchy tune, perhaps implanting on our thought processes that sugar is what we need in order to help us with energy and to help some of the natural products we eat or drink, in order to make them more palatable.

In today's world, canned and preserved goods, TV dinners, ready made sauces, and refined carbohydrates in the form of biscuits, cakes and sweets are readily consumed both for their speed of preparation and also the convenience of having them in the cupboard. These so called convenience foods are laden with sugar and salt and the ingestion of this type of diet soon leads to major health problems. Unfortunately, the power of media advertising convinces us that certain products are good for us and suitable for our health. How many members of the general public stop to read the wording on the label when shopping?

So often in my work I find clients who, from an early age, were given sweetened fruit juices, sticky dummies and sweets on a daily basis, in order to control their crying.  The so-called pacifier may have been a comfort to the parent, but to the child learning this habit from an early age, it was an addiction to sugar.

Coronary heart disease is now the number one killer together with cancer, diabetes etc., and not just amongst the elderly, yearly we see the statistics which show that people in their twenties and thirties are being overcome with these diseases, and now even younger members of the public such as young children are suffering from obesity and diabetes at a time when they should be experiencing high energy levels. A suitable diet, including fruit and vegetables is lacking in the majority of these people.  This will come as no surprise to those of us interested in nutrition and optimal health but it still appears to be somewhat of a mystery to the majority of the medical profession in spite of major publicity on the subject.

I was indeed fortunate that my grandmother used very little sugar in her cooking and it was certainly never of the white variety. One of her greatest cleansers was sulphur and black strap molasses. I am not sure whether she was a fan of the late Gayelord Hauser whose lectures on living foods were so popular both in America and in the UK. His books, 'Diet Does It' and 'Eat and Grow Beautiful', were so successful that the English and the French bought the right to publish them in both countries. In 1950 his book 'Look Younger, Live Longer' was published making him a legend. He, like so many people, had overcome a serious illness and had been left to die. A change in his lifestyle and diet soon rectified the illness and with the knowledge he obtained he lived until almost 90, having been told earlier in his life that he only had a few months to live.

A recent study in America has proved that women who consume a high dietary glycemic load may increase their risk of colorectal (colon) cancer. The study consisted of 38,451 women who were followed for almost eight years. The report was published in the official journal of the Cancer Institute. This report finally recognises what Nobel Prize winner Dr. Warburg of Germany predicted 70 years ago that increased sugar levels lead to cancer.

In Nancy Appleton's book 'Lick The Sugar Habit' she reveals many insights into how sugar and carbohydrates affect our health. Her research is extremely thorough and the bibliography extremely comprehensive. This book is essential reading if we are to understand how elevated insulin levels, by the consumption of either sugar or carbohydrates, spells illness which can affect everyone's health. Just listing out these points on a flyer and giving them to clients may make them understand the dangers they are putting themselves under by their learned behaviour of sugar and carbohydrate eating. Like all learned behaviour, sugar and carbohydrate education started at the beginning of our lives and to break the addiction needs more than willpower, it requires a change of lifestyle, and often an investigation into the emotions surrounding the addiction. For make no mistake sugar is an addiction that needs to be conquered, if we are to attain good health.

Look around you and see where the addiction of sugar is coming from. Why has it become such a comfort in our lives? Let us leave the sugar where it belongs with another old poem "What are puppy dogs made of? Sugar and Spice, and all things nice".