The Power of Food Dr. William Li

By Marci Moreau

BBeginning with our first breath, food is paramount in our lives, nourishing our body and mind with all we need to maintain, sustain, and promote life and growth. Essential for all we are and all we will be, one of the most powerful relationships we will ever have is with food.

At its best, food provides the vital energy of life, and it impacts the total essence of our human experience. Emotionally, food is evocative, the slightest aroma or taste can transport us to another place in time. Socially and culturally, food has the ability to connect lives and bring people together. Around our tables, it is with food and people, we share our stories, reveal our passions, and celebrate life. Physically, food is a powerful life force, and when the food we eat is cleaner, healthier, and real, we experience better health and much more happiness.

With such a significant role in our lives, it comes as no surprise the conversations have expanded to include the science of food, making today a perfect storm for food, health, and wellness.

We now have the hard science telling us the right foods can strengthen, transform, and even heal, and we have the greatest leaders in science and research crusading the cause for the power of food. With more and more research examining the impact of food, diet, and nutrition on health outcomes, the message is now clear: foods we choose to eat matter and play a pivotal role in our health and wellness trajectory.

Standing at the forefront of this crusade, Dr. William Li has landed in the ranks of what I consider a champion for the power of food. Beginning with his first TED Talk, “Can We Eat to Starve Cancer?” Dr. Li has been a pioneer in using food to promote health and prevent disease.

He is an internationally renowned Harvard-trained medical doctor, researcher, and president and a founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation. His groundbreaking work has impacted more than seventy diseases, including cancer, diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. He is also a NY Times best-selling author of two books, Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat your Diet.

In his words, “We are truly at a turning point in the fight against disease…each of us has an enormous opportunity to take charge of our lives using food to transform our health.”

Using food as part of prevention and treatment for mental and physical health is a game changer for the field of medicine. The research to get us here has involved multidisciplinary efforts and required countless hours of testing, analysis, and scrutiny.

Dr. Li’s work highlights this connection between food and health, stating “We have to do a better job at preventing disease before we have to cure it, and the answer is in food. “

His approach is not a diet but to provide people with the science and evidence about which foods to integrate into your life to promote health and wellness and prevent disease.

In his book “Eat to Beat Disease” he tells us our bodies are protected by remarkable defense systems, five to be exact, protecting us from disease, and each and every system can be influenced by food. According to Dr Li., Mother Nature has laced our foods with the power of better health and there are hundreds of foods that have the capacity to do so.

Better health with better food is always something to celebrate; however some of the most recent breakthroughs are by far the most compelling. Focusing on gut health as the central axis for disease prevention, Dr. Li tells us, “We need to look at everything we put in our gut and ask how will this help or harm me?” and he is bringing us some very hopeful news.

Research is revealing individuals with more good gut bacteria and less bad gut bacteria are more likely to respond to the newest immunotherapy drugs when in treatment for cancer. And even more, a higher fiber diet appears to feed the good bacteria, making them better fighters, playing a role in strengthening the immune response to cancer, as well.

Although this area is very new, it’s hard not to get excited at the promise of, in some way, influencing treatment and recovery for cancer with food. To me, when food, science, and our bodies can work together to save lives, there is nothing more powerful.