The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy is a cookbook born from the heart of Heroes and Horses, a Montana-based nonprofit where veterans embark on 41-day wilderness journeys and discover the healing power of whole foods. Co-founder of Heroes and Horses and author Mackenzie Fink, who overcame her own health challenges, shares 55 nourishing recipes that celebrate food as medicine through four gentle pillars: whole foods, balanced nutrition, simplicity, and intuitive eating. From spirulina smoothies that sustain her five children through busy mornings to Korean beef bowls cooked over campfires in the backcountry, these recipes eliminate processed foods, sugar, dairy, and inflammatory grains, restoring balance within while honoring the body's wisdom.
Beyond the kitchen, this book invites readers to participate in the healing the world so deeply needs by reconnecting with their food sources—whether through windowsill herb gardens or visits to farmers markets—remembering that food is medicine, and our relationship to it is sacred. Additionally, the book includes meal planning guidance and gentle practices for developing an intuitive relationship with nourishment. Join Mackenzie as she guides you back to the ancient understanding that our bodies are temples deserving of reverence, one mindful meal at a time.
About Mackenzie Fink
Mackenzie Fink is the author of The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy: Traditional Wisdom Guided by Science and the co-founder and wellness director of Heroes and Horses, a transformative human development program for combat veterans. At Heroes and Horses, Mackenzie works with participants to help them remember who they are outside the narrative of being “broken,” guiding them back into their bodies, their lives and their own agency. She also created the nonprofit’s Resilient Heart spouse program, drawing on her experience as the wife of a former Navy SEAL and paramilitary contractor with 13 combat deployments, to help bring balance, resilience, and understanding into the home.
A mother of five, Mackenzie has spent more than 20 years cultivating a self-sustaining lifestyle, homeschooling her children, raising and growing her family’s food on their Montana homestead, and deepening her connection with the natural world. Taste has been one of her strongest senses since childhood, forming her early culinary foundation. Her lifelong health journey has moved from the physical to the nutritional, emotional, psychological, and ultimately spiritual, all of which shape her holistic approach to food. One of her greatest joys is turning nourishment into an art form of love.
Creating The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy was itself a profound personal transformation for Mackenzie. Unlike traditional cookbooks focused solely on recipes, The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy weaves together a personal story of love and healing, tested recipes from the Heroes and Horses program, and practical wisdom for developing an intuitive relationship with food that goes far beyond meal planning.
In 2020, Mackenzie experienced a pivotal internal shift that dismantled her previous understanding of life. That period of upheaval sparked a cycle of death and rebirth that became the most challenging and transcendent experience of her life. She has continued to engage this unfolding process, learning to alchemize pain into beauty, pleasure, and power by allowing herself to feel the full spectrum of human emotion.
Mackenzie began writing The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy while pregnant in 2022. Over the next year, she navigated childbirth, an autoimmune disorder, and numerous health issues, committing herself to healing through food and restoring her body within a year. The cookbook’s recipes and practices invite readers to honor their bodies as sacred, while rediscovering the joy, medicine, and simplicity of whole foods. It reflects the messages of Mackenzie’s heart and the wisdom she’s gathered along her own journey.
