Harvesting Health: The Role of Herbal Medicine in Food and Agriculture Systems

During a recent event organized by Food Tank and Traditional Medicinals, speakers discussed the growing interest in plant-based medicine, the role of herbal medicine in food systems, and the potential benefits these products can have on human and planetary health.

For millennia, food has been used as a form of medicine. “The line between food and medicine was much less clear,” says Holly Johnson, Chief Science Officer at the American Herbal Products Association. Around the 18th and 19th centuries, however, The Center for Food as Medicine and The Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center reports that many Western cultures began to shift away from nutrition-based medicine.