With so much talk and debate about health reform in the news lately, it may help to broaden your views of medicine by watching this eye-opening documentary by Bill Moyers. My mum has been showing this video to her first year Chinese medicine students for decades and it’s sure to make you re-think what you know about Chinese medicine and our western values and attitudes towards health care.

“Health is not just the absence of illness, it’s a philosophy of life.”

Chinese medicine is an independent system of health care that has developed from a continuous process of observation, critical thinking and practice for over two thousand years. It originates from the philosophy of Taoism, and is influenced by the belief that the life and activity of individual human beings have an intimate relationship with their environment on all levels.

The principal ideas of Chinese medicine are part of the fabric of Chinese culture and civilisation. They are not complex and reflect a world-view of health and disease that is understood by many ordinary members of Chinese society as part of their upbringing. Health care is viewed as one of several means to a good life, and is seen as an individual’s harmonious interaction with the community and with the physical and spiritual environment.

You may also be interested in reading Harvard Magazine’s The New Ancient Trend in Medicine to learn more about the story of Dr David Eisenberg who features in this documentary.

Food has become a commodity thanks to the mass production and marketing engines of our developed economies. We take the convenience of the supermarket for granted and no longer care about what we are eating or where it has come from. Moreover, the supermarket chains are driven by profit and not the health of their consumers, such that their most profitable items are frequently tobacco and confectionery brands.

I’m not a vegetarian, but I do care about eating well as an enjoyable experience and eating healthy, nutritious food. It has often been drilled into me by my family that we should never compromise on the food that we eat, and I believe this has much merit.

The following two TED talks ought to be watched together and they have certainly given me reason to think twice when I’m craving fast food or see a juicy steak on the menu. The bottom line is not that meat is bad for you (perhaps it’s not good for you either) but that we are eating way too much of it.

Mark Bittman reveals that “a hundred years ago, shipping food all over the country was a ridiculous notion. Margarine didn’t exist. Mums actually cooked. There was no snack food, frozen food or restaurant chains. No marketing, no national brands and vitamins had not yet been invented. Food was just food and everyone ate local.”

All of this is happening because the production of food is an industry in which there is an imperative to produce more, and persuade consumers to eat more, so that companies can earn more. We are eating far too much meat and junk food, and like the animals who are being raised on diets of corn and antibiotics, we’re also eating food that’s keeping us alive but not necessarily making us healthier.

Ann Cooper’s talk is about the bad food behaviour and example we are teaching our children as a society. We need to teach children why it’s important to eat healthy because they are learning about bad food in schools. Food has become an afterthought because it is so cheap and plentiful, and if we are to reverse this trend then we all have to start by re-educating ourselves so that we can start making smarter and healthier food choices.