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Food or drugs? Choice on your plate
Your plate is your first hospital. When it is balanced with vegetables, wholesome starches, and plant proteins, it prevents disease long before doctors are called in
A few weeks ago, on a flight from India, I sat next to a prominent Kenyan businessman who owns one of the country’s private hospitals. He was returning from a major medical and healthcare services event that had brought together practitioners from across the globe.
As we waxed eloquent, our conversation turned to health in Kenya. I asked him why so many people today are dying from diseases that should be preventable. His answer was blunt: “Lifestyle”.
That word has stayed with me. It captures the truth we often avoid, that many of the illnesses filling our hospitals are not accidents of fate but consequences of daily choices, especially what we eat. If you do not eat your food like medicine, you will one day eat medicine like food.
Every plate is a prescription. It can write you into health, energy, and long life, or it can write you into disease, pain, and endless hospital bills. Nature has always protected us.
Foods such as maize, millet, sorghum, sukuma wiki, ndengu, cassava, sweet potatoes, and fruits provide essential nutrients that strengthen immunity, restore energy, and help guard against chronic illnesses. They are the real medicines, available on our farms and in our markets.
The problem is that we are steadily abandoning them. Across Kenyan cities, fast food chains, deep-fried snacks, processed meat, and sugar-laden drinks dominate. These foods might be convenient, yet their long-term consequences are grim: diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and obesity.
Already, our healthcare system is straining under this burden, treatment costs drain households, and productivity is lost.
Your plate is your first hospital. When it is balanced with vegetables, wholesome starches, and plant proteins, it prevents disease long before doctors are called in. When it is loaded with processed and unhealthy foods, it quietly prepares you for a hospital ward.
The cultural aspect cannot be ignored. Many people still measure prosperity by the consumption of daily red meat or even see vegetables and fruits as optional, resulting in an unbalanced diet. Yet our traditional diets were plant-rich, balanced, and sustaining. It is not just about food; it is about reconnecting with the wisdom that our grandparents lived by.
The next time you sit down to eat, pause and ask: Is this plate protecting me, or is it preparing me for the hospital? That question could save you, your family, and even the nation enormous costs.
If we begin to treat food as medicine, the ripple effect will be transformative: fewer lifestyle diseases, lower medical expenses, stronger families, and a healthier workforce. The future of healthcare does not begin in hospitals. It starts on our plates.
Food is medicine. Nature still protects, if only we let it.
The writer is a climate action enthusiast and a communications specialist at Windward Communications Consultancy.
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