[Not Available].

Abstract

Although deriving new insights from knowledge of the scientific aspects of nutrition, a key component of health and the ability to resist disease, the cultural, social and economic factors are equally significant, but were emphasized by the mechanistic-scientific physician. Practical advice, such as counseling patients about the effect of specific foods on their health, was transferred by the mechanistic physicians to nutrition specialists or public health authorities. A variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors contributed to the development of "high tech" medicine that minimizes or ignores the multi-dimensional dietary component of health and disease, some of which are explored here. The physician will discover that interventions made before disease strikes, especially at an age when health care costs are rising beyond society's ability to pay for them, are as important before than after the body is challenged by illness, particularly in the development of chronic diseases.