Around the country, nonprofits and local governments are testing the idea of food as medicine through produce prescription programs.
By prescribing free, healthy foods in the same way that doctors prescribe medications, clinicians and policymakers hope to remove financial barriers to accessing fruits and vegetables for individuals with diet-related illness. Specifically, produce prescriptions offer vouchers, debit cards, or loyalty cards to facilitate access to free or discounted produce at grocery retail and farmers' markets.
A Tufts-led pooled analysis of nine such programs found that the programs were associated with positive benefits, from halving food insecurity to lowering blood pressure. The reductions seen in blood sugar were roughly half of that of commonly prescribed medications, an encouraging outcome derived from a simple change in diet.
Researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts analyzed surveys and medical records from over 1,800 children and 2,000 adults who had been identified as low-income and at risk for cardiometabolic diseases. Study participants had been enrolled in produce prescription programs operating across 22 sites in 12 U.S. states from 2014 to 2020.
The data showed an increase in fruit and vegetable intake (by about a serving per day among adults) as well as improved clinical biomarkers of cardiometabolic health.
Researcher Kurt Hager said that a meaningful impact on health outcomes could be achieved through improvements in those biomarkers. He noted that the study also revealed improvements in fruit and vegetable intake, food security, and self-reported health status among child participants. Hager, now at UMASS UMass Chan Medical School, is a graduate of the Ph.D. program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
Questions remain, including about which programs are likeliest to be effective, the optimal length of a program’s operation, and what happens to patient health outcomes when the programs conclude. Nonetheless, such evaluations can have large impacts. For one thing, they will likely help guide the implementation of the Biden-Harris administration’s National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, which calls for expanded produce prescription programs for people enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare, Veterans Affairs, and the Indian Health Service.