During a recent event, chefs, nonprofit advocates, and Food is Medicine experts came together to discuss how access to nutritious, culturally relevant foods can address the high rate of diet-related illnesses in the United States while supporting farmers and the planet. The webinar is the second part of a series hosted by Food Tank and the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation.
Lack of good nutrition is the leading driver of poor health outcomes in the U.S., the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University reports.
Those experiencing hunger are particularly at risk. “We’ve seen that the food insecure population suffers from chronic disease at twice the rate of the food secure population,” says Radha Muthiah, CEO of Capital Area Food Bank.
Food is Medicine interventions including medically tailored meals and produce prescriptions offer one solution to this challenge, the speakers argue, because they’re designed to help eaters access healthy foods while addressing eaters’ specific nutritional needs.
“These are programs that are getting food into the hands of patients who are suffering because they don’t have access to healthy food,” says Devon Klatell, Vice President of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. “I can’t think of anything more common sense than that.”
At the state level, data from many Food is Medicine programs are just starting to come out— and the results are promising, says Katie Garfield, Director of Whole Person Care at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School. She also sees a “great effort” underway to expand access to them.
But Garfield and the other speakers note that long-term implementation requires a shift in the way that the programs are financed. They want to see an approach that doesn’t rely as heavily on philanthropic dollars. “We need to figure out the sustainable funding model for Food is Medicine programs. Right now that’s not in place for states and a lot of insurers across the country,” Garfield states. But she hopes to see this change.
The 1115 Medicaid waivers—which allow states to test new approaches that differ from what is required by federal law—are one lever that can help expand access. To date, however, well under half of all states have approved waivers to cover Food is Medicine treatments.
And as governments and communities work to expand access to nutritious foods, whether in clinical settings or solutions that address systemic barriers to healthy eating, the speakers argue that it is critical to offer culturally relevant options.
There is more than one way to eat healthily, argues Tambra Raye Stevenson, Founder and CEO of Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture (WANDA). But, she continues, “racism has played an unfortunate role, colonization has played an unfortunate role in not allowing the best of us to be innovative in sharing all that our food culture has to offer.”
But the culinary world can help to shift opinions and expose eaters to nutritious foods they may be unfamiliar with, says Chef Sean Sherman, a restaurateur and Founder of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). “I see so much opportunity for utilizing chefs and commercial kitchens to not only normalize but popularize a lot more diversity in our food systems.”
Ultimately, Sherman hopes to see “more Native foods, more culturally appropriate foods out there. It doesn’t have to just be an Indigenous silo,” he says.
Lyndsey Waugh, Executive Director of the Sprouts Foundation, believes that continuing work also requires everyone to be at the table. It’s important, she says, to ”lift up voices and perspectives and have conversations that bring in different people who are looking at these food systems issues.”
And when different stakeholders come together to design solutions effectively, they have the potential to support eaters, agricultural communities, and the health of the planet. “The best Food is Medicine programs,” Klatell says, “think about benefits for the health system and benefits for the food system.”
Listen to the full conversations from Part Two of “Food is Medicine and Eating for Health” and watch the replay of the event below to hear more about the link between nutrition and health outcomes, the role that policy plays in improving eaters’ access to healthy foods, and the far-reaching impact of these solutions.
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Photo courtesy of Thomas Le, Unsplash
