Food & Society at the Aspen Institute recently released the 2024 Food is Medicine Action Plan. The Action Plan highlights the important role that nutrition plays in health and aims to provide a strategy to integrate Food is Medicine interventions into the United States healthcare system.
Building on the 2022 version, the 2024 Action Plan creates a one-stop-shop for peer-reviewed Food is Medicine research, an overview of Food is Medicine interventions, and a set of recommendations for equity-centered research that can revolutionize how diet-related conditions are prevented, treated, and managed in the U.S.
“For us, ‘Food is Medicine’ refers to the intersection of food and health care,” Corby Kummer, Executive Director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, tells Food Tank. “Our vision is really the outline of our principles: Everyone has the food that will allow them to live a healthy, dignified life according to their specific needs.”
Poor diet is now the leading risk factor for death in the U.S., surpassing tobacco use. According to the Action Plan, an estimated 60 percent of the U.S. adult population suffers from at least one chronic health condition, and those that are diet-related are among the most prevalent.
Compounding the issue, the Action Plan reports, tens of millions of people living in the U.S. struggle with food insecurity—defined in the Action Plan as not having consistent access to food for a healthy and active life—which is associated with a wide array of poor physical and mental health outcomes.
Although food has been used to treat and prevent diseases in various cultures for generations, less than 1 percent of lecture hours in U.S. medical schools are dedicated to nutrition.
“FIM interventions are a spectrum of programs and services that respond to the critical link between nutrition and health,” says Kummer.
The promise of Food is Medicine interventions relies on two key principles: first, that inconsistent access to healthy food has a negative impact on health, and second, that programs that increase access to healthy foods can promote positive health outcomes.
According to the Action Plan, a robust body of foundational evidence links food insecurity to poor health outcomes. Being food insecure increases risk for serious physical and mental health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, depression, and anxiety; is associated with higher health care utilization and costs; and motivates a range of coping behaviors that lead to poorer health outcomes, the Action Plan reports.
The Action Plan provides an overview of the published, peer-reviewed research on three categories of Food is Medicine interventions: medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, and produce prescriptions.
And it defines medically tailored meals as fully prepared meals designed by registered dietitians to address an individual’s specific medical needs, including diagnosis, symptoms, allergies, and medication side effects. Medically tailored groceries, as described in the Action Plan, involve distributions of unprepared or lightly processed nutritionally complete ingredients for home preparation. Produce prescriptions are programs offering fresh, canned, or frozen produce that are sometimes paired with nutrition resources or services.
“Across multiple studies,” says Kummer, all three categories of interventions “have been associated with improved clinical outcomes including weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar control (HbA1c).” And the Action Plan reports that interventions are replicable and scalable in many circumstances.
To build on existing findings and strengthen the case for widespread integration into the healthcare system, healthcare providers, academic researchers, and policymakers are seeking more purposeful research, the Action Plan states. The Action Plan aims to respond to this need by providing a set of 18 cross-sector research recommendations.
The recommendations offer guidance to embed equity throughout the Food is Medicine research continuum; develop standardized metrics for intervention evaluation; identify the most urgent questions and gaps that need further exploration; and address how funders and other stakeholders can support the most valuable research in the field.
“Equity underpins the entire Action Plan,” Kummer tells Food Tank. Research that is not centrally guided by equity “risks irrelevance at best—and, at worst, can do real harm, by further embedding the systemic racism and inequitable access that has long run throughout both the food and health systems.”
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Photo courtesy of Leonie Wise, Unsplash
