We don't need a new cave

"Let me be clear—I’m clear we need a new cave as well and I’m working equally if not harder, not in the limelight, to build it. But during the process, I just find many key players still lack basic knowledge or get pulled into the wrong channels and focal points unknowingly..."

Ah. There it is. That final gasp of an argument, the one that comes when you know the premise is slipping. We need a new cave. A confession disguised as insight.

Because what’s being admitted here—without realizing it—is that the problem isn’t that people lack knowledge. It’s that they’re stuck in a framework designed to keep them inside. And instead of getting out, the solution being offered is to build a better one. That’s not revolution. That’s rebranding.

The Illusion of the New Cave

Plato’s allegory of the cave is about mistaking shadows for reality—believing the distorted projections on the wall are truth, simply because you've never seen anything else. The real tragedy isn’t that the prisoners are shackled. It’s that, even when given the opportunity to turn around, they refuse. And that’s exactly what’s happening here.

The "new cave" builders aren’t leading anyone into the light. They aren’t challenging the system they claim to oppose. They’re just making the shadows look sharper, the illusion more convincing, the branding more sophisticated. They don’t break chains. They polish them.

And those who have truly stepped outside the cave—who have seen history, science, and truth without the need for slogans—can only shake their heads. Because once you’ve been outside, you can’t unsee the game.

Food Has Always Been Medicine

The irony in all of this? The revelation being sold here—the idea that food should be understood as part of health—is as old as civilization itself. Chinese monks cultivated entire gardens of herbs not for prevention, but for treatment—the earliest form of plant-based medicine. Hippocrates, the man every wellness influencer loves to quote, wasn’t speaking in metaphor when he said, "Let food be thy medicine." He meant it literally.

In Paris, across from Café de Flore, there’s a statue honoring the two French pharmacists—Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou—who developed quinine from the cinchona tree, one of the first effective treatments for malaria.

And here’s the connection most people miss: Café de Flore was a meeting ground for those who questioned reality—Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway. It was a place where ideas, art, and philosophy broke convention, rejected dogma, and reshaped how we see the world. And directly across from them stands the statue honoring two men who had done the same, but in medicine—who looked at nature, extracted a cure, and challenged the way disease was treated.

What do they all have in common? They left the cave.

Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged existential meaning. Camus rejected false narratives of hope. Picasso shattered artistic conventions. Hemingway reinvented storytelling. And Pelletier and Caventou, instead of accepting the medicinal dogma of their time, looked at nature and discovered a cure.

Café de Flore and the statue across from it are landmark symbols of those who turned away from the shadows on the wall, stepped into the light, and changed the way we see the world.

And today? The people selling you hashtag health, slapping a new label on ancient wisdom, would rather keep you in the cave. They’re not innovators. They’re just the latest version of those rearranging the shadows while selling you a subscription to watch them flicker. The "new cave" builders have no time for such depth. They’re too busy rushing to slap sunglasses on you inside the cave, layering shadows on top of shadows while calling it progress. Because if they truly understood history, they’d realize food has always been both survival and medicine, long before they arrived to sell it back to you.

Meanwhile, Science Catches Up

While the hashtag health industry busies itself with branding, actual science keeps affirming what humans already knew: Blueberries and broccoli—not just trendy superfoods, but biochemically effective. Anthocyanins (in blueberries) and sulforaphane (in broccoli) reduce oxidative stress and slow dementia. Coffee—a drink the world has cherished for centuries—not only boosts cognitive function but reduces the risk of colon cancer, thanks to its polyphenols and chlorogenic acid. Chicory coffee, rich in inulin, has been clinically tested by the Mayo Clinic to improve colitis ulcerosa (high-dose, 10-week study).

We didn’t "discover" these things. We finally figured out why they work.But the cave-dwellers can’t sell history. So they need a new cave, a fresh frame, a way to make the same concept seem revolutionary again.

Hashtag Health: Selling You a Cave

And that’s what this whole "Food Is Health" vs. "Food Is Medicine" debate is really about.It’s not about truth. It’s about positioning. It’s about owning the conversation, controlling the platform, and getting people to subscribe—not just to a newsletter, but to an entire worldview where health is something you must constantly chase, optimize, and buy into. The people pushing this don’t want you healthy. They want you engaged. They want you inside their version of the cave. It’s the same business model as Big Pharma, just with organic branding.

Letting Go of the Cave

Here’s the real truth—the one no one can monetize: Health isn’t something you buy. It isn’t a hashtag, a movement, or a platform. It isn’t a better version of the same structure that failed us before. It’s what happens when you remove the barriers. When you stop mistaking shadows for reality. When you realize that the people still inside the cave aren’t trying to lead you out. They’re just trying to own the next one.

And letting go means finally walking away.

The French, at least, understood something these health branders never will: That food isn’t just fuel. It isn’t just medicine. It’s culture, it’s pleasure, it’s science, and it’s life. They don’t argue over whether "Food Is Health" or "Food Is Medicine." They don’t slap a hashtag on it. They simply live well—in a society that, for all its indulgence, ironically produces fewer metabolic diseases than the industrialized food systems that claim to be optimizing health.

Meanwhile, the "new cave" is just the same old health-industrial complex, repackaged and resold to those still searching for an answer outside of themselves.

So, the question is—are you still looking for a cave?

Or are you finally walking out?