There is no evidence that Hippocrates, although being credited for it, ever literally stated ‘let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food’. However, yet in line with Hippocrates’ philosophy, we are currently witnessing a reappraisal of the complementarity of nutrition and pharmacology. 

Nutritional strategies to stabilize or even ‘reverse’ the disease process itself. Here, most successful examples come from chronic disorders directly associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, specifically obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes type 2 and its comorbidities (Katsagoni et al., 2017, Lean et al., 2018, Li et al., 2018b, McCombie et al., 2017, Pan et al., 2018, Perez-Martinez et al., 2017, Steinberg et al., 2017, van Ommen et al., 2018, Webb and Wadden, 2017). However, the list of other diseases for which there is evidence suggesting that healthy nutrition can reduce disease burden and (or) progression is also increasing. Examples include, but are not limited to, depression (Lucas et al., 2014, Martínez-González and Sánchez-Villegas, 2016), osteoarthritis (Rayman, 2015), functional bowel diseases (Tuck and Vanner, 2017), and multiple sclerosis (Fitzgerald et al., 2017).