A Social Scientist Writing Health Books

Before 2005, I did not plan to write any health books. It never crossed my mind to do so. However, things change when I delivered free health talks. Increasingly more peoples requested me to write health books. But, I am only a social scientist and not even a nutritionist. The only difference is over the years, I have gathered much knowledge and experience about food and its impacts on health. After hesitating for some time, I finally decided that health information could be disseminated more widely when it is published.

The decision to write this book is to help promote health food and share my family’s experience. The first edition of this book was published in March 2007. With encouraging response and requests by Chinese and Malay friends, two other health books were subsequently published, Xun Zhao Jian Kang (in Chinese in October 2007) and Makanan Sihat Sebagai Ubat (in Malay in September 2008). By October 2008, when the first print of 1,000 copies of this health book was almost sold out, I began revising and updating the book. Hence, the publication of this second edition of Eating for Good Health in 2009.

The writing of the first edition of this health book attracted the attention of a private company filming a special TV programme on the potential of agriculture in Malaysia. The TV series was sponsored by CIMB Group with support from Sime Darby Sdn. Bhd. After hearing how health food enables my father-in-law, a cancer patient, to live for 11 years without radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the decision was to shoot a special TV series on it. It was aired over NTV 7 from 5.00 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. on 27 May 2007 under the theme “Seeds”.

It is my sincere hope that with the publication of health books in different languages, more people would join in the food revolution that could save human health and the world.

The message is one of the important paths to good health is via healthy eating habits. A healthy body makes a healthy mind. We may avoid both physical and mental suffering when we consume health food. We may have more energy to do more things and to perform better in daily tasks.

Health food is not a sophisticated sphere of knowledge as thought by many. A gradual approach may be adopted in switching to health food. The change should be done in accordance to your pace and food preference. As long as we are willing to learn, recognize the true faces of food, let go of all forms of toxic food and gradually replace them with vegetables, fruits and grains, all of us have a higher chance of reclaiming our health, keeping illnesses and diseases at bay.

To my family, health is a form of wealth that can never be replaced by material wealth. Being healthy enables us to enrich our livelihood and the livelihood of others and contribute more to the well-being of our society.