Up until the middle of the 19th century, the use of plants and fruits for the prevention, treatment and cure of an illness was almost exclusive among the therapeutic possibilities of medical science. In the last 20-30 years, men have re-discovered medicaments of vegetable origin as the means of modern therapy. 

On our planet, at least 80% of the sick are treated mostly or exclusively with natural agents. Over 40% of the medicine used in developed industrial countries originates from natural resources. 

Within medicine, over one hundred vegetable compounds belong to natural ingredients from which medicine containing one active ingredient is produced. 

The number of medical herbs we apply in the form different extracts, as phyto-therapy, during the course of our self-treatment, is substantial. 

In several countries of the world, (the United States of America, Holland, Great Britain, etc.) the trade of vegetable medicaments and food supplements or functional food is significant, while in other countries (Germany, Belgium, France), having met very high qualitative requirements, they are considered medicine or natural products, and their share in self-treatment is extremely great (in Germany it is approximately 50%)Environmental harms are responsible for our medical status to 30-35%, or way of life to 30-35%, the genetic stock to 10-15%, while health care to 10-15%. In the past decades, the most positive feature of the interest in food supplements is that attention has shifted to prevention, therefore to the individual endeavouring to do something for his or her health. The other such feature is that we attribute traditionally favourable medical effects to certain foods, among them to fruits, vegetables and herbs. We know that for thousands of years, food was also considered to be effective medicine as well. Nowadays, the attention of the scientific world – not by chance – is focussed on the “apothecary of food” again. 

During the course of our lives, we eat food over eighty thousand times. The body continuously rebuilds itself from the nutrition. It is worth reconsidering the words of Szent-Györgyi Albert: 

“The cleanness, humidity and temperature of the air, the noise and stress, and the amount of physical work, etc., are all very important. But one of the most basic elements in our connection with the environment is food as the most direct way in which our environment penetrates our system is in the form of food.”

The diet that is rich in vegetable nourishment also provides the system with several vegetable substances that do not have a nutritive value but protect our health: among others, poliphenols, flavonoids, vegetable dies, and other materials of positive biological effect, including important natural anti-oxidants. These prevent the emergence or delay the progression of several acute illnesses. 

In a healthy human body, the free radical reactions are under controland have several useful, what is more, indispensable functions. However, their accumulation might start dangerous processes and might severely damage the bio-molecules, cells, and tissues constituting the system, thus resulting in lipid-peroxidisation, the decay of cells and the emergence of cancerous cells. Their important feature is that they exercise their effect most favourably, by strengthening each other. 

Szabó László