By Ethel Mendius
We all understand the crucial role nutrition fulfills in human well being. The food as medicine approach promotes nutritious foods for the health of individuals, communities, and societies.
The Importance Of Nutrition
A 2019 study considered 195 countries and found “one of every five deaths across the globe is attributable to suboptimal diet, more than any other risk factor.” These findings suggest the potential of food and nutrition intervention in improving health outcomes.
Nutrition is key in advancing global health and disease prevention: “interventions that are effective for individual patients have the potential to affect population health and shape broader food and health policy reform.”
What Does Food As Medicine Mean?
The guiding principle of this concept is that healthy food can treat, prevent, and alleviate disease. Food as medicine means “prioritizing food and diet in an individual’s health plan” and challenging the primacy of pharmaceutical drugs.
Existing Food As Medicine Approaches
As a movement, food as medicine gained traction during the HIV epidemic of the 1980s, “when public health advocates launched nutrition programs to aid management of AIDS.” It has remained a powerful tool in promoting better health outcomes for individuals and populations.
Healthcare providers may already “prescribe dietary and lifestyle changes as a first-line treatment,” for example for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Those who suffer from PCOS are advised to eat high fiber, lean protein, and anti-inflammatory foods.
It would be irresponsible to suggest that food can replace conventional medicine. However, “eating a diet high in whole, nutritious foods has the power to complement conventional treatments for certain diseases.”
What Is A Healthy Diet?
General nutrition guidelines point to whole foods and a “minimally-processed plant-based” diet to ensure health. Specialized diets can be used to address specific conditions.
Food And Cardiovascular Disease
According to WHO, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide: “The world’s biggest killer is ischaemic heart disease, responsible for 16% of the world’s total deaths.”
Heart disease is directly linked with diet quality. A study from 2019 found that “even a 10% increase in the consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.”
The American Heart Association recommends a “diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, low-fat dairy, and plant-based or lean animal protein.” A heart healthy diet, along with exercise and a tobacco-free lifestyle, are “the keys to preventing and managing cardiovascular disease.”
Preventing Chronic Disease
Heart disease is one of many chronic diseases. The CDC estimates that six in ten adults in the U.S. live with a chronic disease, such as cancer, kidney disease, and diabetes.
In recent decades, “chronic disease incidence and prevalence has been growing rapidly throughout the globe”. Nutrition can be used in disease management to better the quality of life for chronically ill people.
Evidence suggests that food can even prevent some chronic health conditions: “Various healthy diets… could reduce the risk associated with the development of chronic diseases.”
Promoting Food And Nutrition Services
The proof is in the pudding: food cannot replace medicine, but it should play an important role in our healthcare system. Many organizations throughout the U.S. advocate for public policy that promotes national well being through nutrition science.
Food Is Medicine Massachusetts (FIMMA) is one such organization. FIMMA promotes a multifaceted approach to nutrition intervention, starting with individuals and then considering the health of communities.
Medically Tailored Meals
FIMMA recommends medically tailored meals that are “developed to address the dietary needs of an individual’s medical condition by a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.” These meals help individuals manage chronic conditions in their day to day lives.
The Food Is Medicine Coalition is another organization that specializes in medically tailored meals. Their research finds that individuals with these plans are 50% less likely to be admitted to the hospital for their conditions.
Community-Level Healthy Food Programs
Community-level healthy food programs target poor nutrition at its source. They “provide nutritious foods for a population that currently has or is at increased risk for chronic disease associated with food insecurity.”
These programs are designed to alleviate the societal causes of a poor diet, such as poverty or lack of access to healthy foods. They go further than “generalized federal nutrition programs such as SNAP and WIC” to address nutritional deficits.
This approach includes community gardens and agriculture, discounted food markets, and food pantries. It can be facilitated by healthy food prescriptions, which “generally begin with a partnership between a hospital and a local farmer’s market or community supported agriculture.”
The Wider Benefits Of Food As Medicine
The Friedman School of Nutrition Science writes that the U.S. faces a “national nutrition crisis” of great consequence: “Our food system is a major cause of poor health, ever-rising healthcare costs, strangled government budgets… and hunger and disparities.”
Fortunately, addressing the “nutrition crisis” is a “win-win”. Coherent nutrition policy would also promote “lower health care costs, greater sustainability, reduced disparities, improved economic competitiveness, and greater national security.”
When we look at the wider benefits, we can plainly see food is medicine. The knock-on effects of a healthier society would benefit people and planet.
Food As Medicine In Religion
Future Learn provides a great overview of different cultures’ and religions’ understanding of food as medicine. Their article highlights different approaches to food as medicine throughout human history.
In Greece and Rome, health was understood through the balance of “the four humors.” The humors determined your health and temperament, and they could be methodically altered by changing your diet.
The Okinawan people live on the Ryukyu Islands between Japan and China and are one of the longest-living people in the world. They are very influenced by the Chinese ideas of longevity through diet. The Okinawans “believe that ‘food maketh the man’ and that the food they eat is ‘nuchi gusui’, or ‘medicine for life’.”
And in old traditional European diets, people ate many wild greens for good health and for recovering from illnesses.” Today we know scientifically that “most of these edible wild greens provide a rich source of vitamins and micronutrients.”
Our religions can give us a framework for eating foods that are healthy for us and the planet. The importance of eating fresh organic fruits and vegetables should be highlighted in our religions. Religions teach us how to live, and they connect us with healthy food traditions that can stretch back thousands of years.
The body is a temple. How will you protect yours?
* Featured image source
