How Food Shapes Health–or Illness in the Modern World
Food Matters in Wellness
and Illness
Reclaim Your Health — One Meal at a Time
I am an international nutrition researcher, educator, and author — specializing in how the food choices we make each day shape health, weight, and well-being.
Since serving as the nutritionist on Dean Ornish, M.D.'s landmark clinical trial for reversing heart disease — and later as Director of Nutrition on similar research in European cardiovascular clinics — it's clear that more and more of us struggle with overeating, weight gain, and other diet-linked conditions — from heart disease and diabetes to depression, and more.
This concern led my husband, behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, PhD, and me to decades of research with thousands of participants. What we discovered: replacing today's new-normal overeating styles with the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social "ingredients" of Whole Person Integrative Eating® can lead to eating less, weighing less, and enhancing health. Without dieting.
Eat well. Weigh less. Enhance health.
Food is more than fuel or numbers on a label. It influences your health and mood — wellness or illness. The food choices you make each day have the power to prevent, even reverse, many diet-linked health problems — one meal at a time. The choice is yours.
May you always be nourished,
DEBORAH KESTEN
Scientific breakthroughs reveal that the food choices you make each day play a pivotal role in wellness or illness…over time. This suggests a new, empowering relationship with food — one based on the possibility of prevention, health, and healing.
Demystifying Optimal Eating
Eating Well Over Time—
How Health Changes
Whole Person Integrative Eating® — The Book
Online Certificate E-Course
Writing,
Articles,
Reflections
Food and Your Health: What’s Possible
Eating well is about more — much more — than weight. Weight matters. But it's just one piece of the food–health puzzle.
Food plays a central role in both wellness and illness, quietly shaping your physical and mental health over time. What you eat each day influences whether health is sustained — or gradually gives way to illness — influencing not just your weight, but your heart, brain, mood, energy, long-term vitality, and more.
What matters most about the food choices that lead to health and healing is not perfection, restriction, or any single food.
The research is clear: Making healthful food choices each day — consistently over time — has the power to support wellness. This makes eating well one of the most powerful actions you can take for your health. With this insight, food choices become less about weight alone, and more about an everyday way of eating and living that may shape your well-being for the long term.
Whole Person Integrative Eating® introduces a science-backed program for optimal eating that moves beyond nutrients, calories, and short-term fixes. Drawing on decades of research, it explores how food choices and eating behaviors influence physical, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being — and how this whole-person way of eating supports eating less and weighing less over time. Recognized with the Book Excellence Award (#1, Health category).
"Deborah Kesten's work offers a profoundly powerful, evidence-based path to sustainable freedom from overweight and obesity."
— David Reed Miloy, MD, MS, Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician
I created the Foundations of Whole Person Integrative Eating® certificate e-course is for individuals and health professionals who want an evidence-based, practical program that supports health and long-term well-being.
Through lectures, readings, and experiential exercises, you’ll learn which foods and eating behaviors contribute to overeating and weight gain — and conversely, how a whole-person approach supports a healthier, lasting relationship with food, eating, and health.
"This is the first program I have encountered that addresses the whole person — physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially — which is absolutely essential for creating and sustaining healthy living practices for a lifetime."
— Dr. Karen Webster
I turn food and nutrition discoveries into insights that empower you to live up to your health potential — for life
My research and writing translate cutting-edge science into practical insights about the full healing potential of food — influencing not only your physical health, but also your emotional, spiritual, and social well-being. These insights empower you to live up to your health potential. Each time you eat.
Read my articles on Substack →
Listen to the podcast →
The science is in: 21st century studies reveal that many diet-linked conditions — often associated with aging — are not inevitable. Heart disease, diabetes, overweight, depression, and more — conditions often considered permanent or progressive — may be prevented, managed, and in some cases reversed, through the food choices you make each day.
State-of-the-art studies also tell us that optimal eating is not about dieting, restriction, or perfection. It's about tapping into the healing benefits of food — for body, mind, soul, and social well-being — and savoring its power to heal and thrive.
Eating for prevention, health, and healing is a real possibility. One meal at a time.