POLITICO: How Prescribing Tomatoes Could Help Some Americans Eat Better After Covid

A woman weighs and packs locally grown tomatoes for the Local Food Hub's Fresh Farmacy program in Charlottesville, VA.

Pressure is growing to prescribe fresh produce as part of medical care. Will the health care system respond?

This Politico article dives into diet-related illnesses and the heightened awareness of nutrition security since the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. Simple solutions are right around the corner.

Excerpt from article below

“These programs haven’t had their moment,” said Michel Nischan, a chef and food advocate who started Wholesome Wave, which promotes and assists produce prescribing, in tandem with local community groups. “They are very difficult to fund.”

Handing someone a prescription for free fruits and vegetables isn’t the same thing as just pointing someone to a food pantry or using food stamps to buy subsidized healthy food at a farmer’s market. Making it a prescription — written by a trusted health care provider — directly connects food to health and can spur changes in consumption and behavior that promote health.

“When you look at being able to combine the power of a doctor’s advice, the intelligence and knowledge of a nutritionist, the engagement skills of community health workers to avoid Type 2 diabetes … that can bring results that can be measured,” said Nischan, the chef turned food activist.

Whether the goal is to prevent someone with pre-diabetes from developing full-blown diabetes, or to keep someone who already has a disease from getting worse, spending a few hundred dollars on fruits and vegetables is a lot cheaper than dialysis and amputation, he added.