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By Sarah Robinson Photos courtesy of Dr. Andrew Weil
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Honest and Hungry
True Food Kitchen founder Andrew Weil on health, nutrition and life 8 May/June 2021
etween juice cleanses and celebrity diets, intermittent fasting, and removing gluten, milk or carbs from your diet, it’s hard to know the right way to eat for your health. Dr. Andrew Weil, co-owner and founder of True Food Kitchen, felt the same way. The intersection of medicine and nutrition enticed him. From a young age, he was interested in science, biology and anatomy, and quickly determined he could combine these interests in a career in medicine. “When I was in medical school, I was very struck by the absence of any information about nutrition and, actually, about health in general,” Weil says. “I heard very little about health or healing in my medical studies, so I was just determined to find out for myself, to learn about things that I didn’t get enough information on in medical school.” After graduating from Harvard Medical School with his medical degree, he began to realize his chosen path, integrative medicine, wasn’t as widely accepted by traditional Western medical practitioners, so he set his sights on the horizon and traveled across the world, seeking out practitioners of other kinds of medicine. “I learned about Chinese medicine, for example,” he says. “I also traveled widely for a number of years in North and South America, then in Africa and Asia, looking at healing practices and other cultures about foods and things about health. So, it was from several years of travel and meeting people that I’d rather gradually put together my own system.” Throughout his travels, he learned food is often an integral part of healing in certain cultures, which began to shape his philosophy on food being medicinal. “That’s very much a part of Chinese medical philosophy,” says Weil. “They really don’t distinguish between foods and medicines. A lot of ingredients in Chinese food are there primarily for their perceived health benefits, as well as for tastes or textures.” His interest in food and his passion for cooking and growing fresh produce at home coincided. “I’ve always been a very good home cook. I’m not a chef, but I’m a good home cook,” he says. “Over the years, many people who ate my food said, ‘You ought to open a restaurant.’” Weil didn’t want to open a restaurant, though. It wasn’t until a friend of his introduced him to a successful restaurateur, Sam Fox, that he began to change his mind. www.westervillemagazine.com
