Dr. Joe Schwarcz

conditions like cancer, and of course you can go on the web and there will be all kinds of websites that will tell you what to eat and what not to eat if you're already been diagnosed with cancer.

There, there's much less evidence for that.

The evidence mostly is for prevention, that we have a healthy diet, you're less likely to suffer from heart disease, less likely to come down with diabetes, less likely to get cancer.

But treatment, that is a very difficult kind of thing.

Now, obviously, there are many food connections.

I mean, if you're allergic to peanuts, obviously, you stay away from peanuts.

So in that sense, food can be medicine.

But I think that the card is often overplayed.

So, yes, there is certainly a relationship between what we eat and our health.

I mean, that's obvious because food is the only raw material that ever goes into our body.

So our body is constructed of the molecules that are found in food.

So obviously what we eat is very important, but it is only one of the determinants of health.

The air that we breathe, the water that we drink, how well we have selected our parents, right?

Genetics.

Those are very critical things.

But so food is one player in the whole health game.

Right.

I mean, the so-called nightshade vegetables have been demonized, eggplant being one, with absolutely no scientific rationale behind it.

This is one of those mythical scares that appears on the Internet.

None of that is based on real science.