Plants or their extracts have long been popular as medicinals, known for their benefits in addressing a panoply of health concerns ranging from age-related conditions and allergies to digestive health and energy to blood-sugar management and weight control. For centuries, they were commonly incorporated into foods and beverages. Food was medicine and medicine was food, to paraphrase Hippocrates.
With the Industrial Age, a division grew between the plants we eat and those we use to manage or cure diseases and health conditions. Pills and potions took over for teas and broths, at least in Western culture, and it wasn’t until comparatively recently that people looked back toward ancient ways that the medicinal value of many of the plants in our diet came to be rediscovered.