Fox and his family have been organic food consumers for decades.

When the hospital nutritionist arrived for a visit, Fox held up a can of Ensure -- a beverage recommended for recovering patients -- and said, "People are trying to get well here. Have you actually read the ingredients in this can?"

Carole Antle, director of capital projects at Kaiser Permanente, cited the use of food in the delivery of health care as one the top issues on Kaiser's horizon. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., Kaiser is just miles away from Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto and in the backyard of cuisine revolutionary Alice Waters (Waters' current project involves organic school gardens that allow children to learn about food production and healthy eating). Even now, many of Kaiser's parking lots are serving as farmers' market sites on the weekends. According to Antle, food may be the next frontier in sustainable health care.

Dr. Jan Radzik couldn't agree more. In medical practice in Oregon since 1985, Radzik prescribes organic food, whole grains, and fibers as a part of his healthy regime.

A founding diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine and a member of the Oregon Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians and American Holistic Medical Association, Radzik keeps statistics about his successes with patients using dietary change and vitamin supplements. One female patient who came to him for serious calcified coronary plaque -- the substance incriminated in hardening of the arteries -- was able to reduce her heart coronary test rating from a moderately high reading of 200 to 13.5 in just one year, he said.

Radzik, who received his medical degree from Jagiellonian University College of Medicine in Poland, said he is currently completing a book on his findings.

Although the doctor's approach is unique; perhaps it won't be for long. Botanical remedies, whole foods, and dietary mediation techniques are not called "alternative medicine" in Poland and in many other places in the world. They are simply considered sound medicine.

by CATE GABLE
Tidepool
Sightline Institute, Seattle WA

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