This is an extract from my “Food as Medicine course with Monash University

Plant foods as medicines

Across history, many fruits and vegetables and other plant foods have been used, recommended and/or avoided for their supposed medicinal properties. As one example, when the Tudor boy king Edward VI was dying of tuberculosis, he was given: spearmint syrup, red fennel, liverwort, turnip, dates, raisins, mace, and celery mixed with raw meat from a 9-day old female piglet. Often particular fruits and vegetables were considered to have particular special properties. For example, people were encouraged to avoid eating too many cucumbers and melons as these are very watery foods and so it was thought that they would encourage fluid retention.
Fruits such as figs, pomegranates and quinces were often considered be very beneficial to health but if you did not live around the Mediterranean region, these were accessible only to the wealthy. Okra, a green, finger shaped vegetable common in Indian cooking, was believed to be effective for assisting with managing diabetes as was bitter melon among Chinese people. In more recent times, cranberries have been regarded as a useful treatment against urinary tract infections although the evidence supporting this is scanty.
In old traditional European diets in countries like Greece, wild greens played an important role. Young leafy shoots and leaves were collected from a great variety of plants including thistle, dandelion, amaranth, stinging nettle, mallow and purslane found growing wild in the countryside. These were eaten raw or boiled and served with lemon juice and olive oil. They were believed to be very important for good health and for recovering from illnesses. Dandelion and sow thistle were used to treat fluid retention. Stinging nettles which are high in vitamin C were used to treat scurvy and anaemia. Spiny chicory (Stamnagathi), a leafy green common in Crete, was boiled and used to treat stomach ache. It is now known that most of these edible wild greens provide a rich source of vitamins and micronutrients. In southern Herzegovina, 18 different wild vegetables were still found to be used in this way today.