This year (2011) marks 15 years in clinical practice since I graduated from college, and over this time I have worked with hundreds of patients, in both Canada and the United States, as well as India and the Caribbean. During this time, as I have worked to help my patients discover and resolve their health problems, one of the issues I most frequently encounter is just how confused people are on the subject of diet.
After acquiring a chronic GI infection while traveling in India in 1990, I left behind a promising career as a film and television actor and immersed myself in the field of Ayurveda and natural medicine, devoting the last 22 years of my life to studying, practicing and teaching the knowledge of food. I have spent thousands of hours coaching my patients and students, striving to give them effective tools they can easily use to optimize their diet, only wishing I could reach more people with this knowledge. In 2000 I started writing a booklet for my patients called “How To Cook: A Guide For The Perplexed”, the title modelled after E. F. Schumacher’s famous book on sustainability. My goal was to give my patients a model of eating that could support their health. In the last 10 years I have gotten a little off track with this project, taking care of a busy family of three kids, as well as teaching and practicing, but now after a rather pregnant nine months of hard work I am happy to announce that the original genesis of my idea has been reborn as a new book called Food As Medicine: The Theory and Practice of Food. This book is a concise encapsulation of my clinical approach to diet, supported by traditional knowledge and extensive research, and contains over 50 delicious recipes to support your health. This book is ideally suited to folks with a strong interest in diet, as well as students and allied health practitioners including yoga teachers, herbalists, naturopaths, chiropractors, nutritionists, nurses and doctors.
