TL;DR

Sarah Huckabee Sanders did something not terrible (we’re also shocked).
Congress set the stage for large budget cuts and was chaotic as usual, we guess.
A new, pro-bono initiative launched to help non-profits grow (it’s very cool).
We go deep on Food is Medicine—starting with what the heck it actually is.

This Month’s Standout Food Stories

👀 Policy Movement We’re Tracking

💰 Budget Resolution: Late last month, the House passed a Budget Resolution that could lead to sharp cuts in SNAP, with the House Ag Committee asked to find $230 billion in savings over the next ten years (cue our fists wagging in the air).

Oh, and Congress has to fund the government by March 14 (yep, that’s in two days). We’ll leave our analysis to newly-crowned Traitors champ, Gabby Windey.

**How You Can Progress Food Policy This Month**

For all organizations: Support the SNAP CASH (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Creating Access to Support Health) Across America Act. Endorsed by Rep. Morgan McGarvey (KY) and the Eva Clayton Rural Food Institute, the bill aims to increase access to fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables. Show your support by filling out this form before March 18.

For community colleges: Our friends at the Food Recovery Network opened the application for the second year of its Community College Food Recovery Grant Program—an initiative that helps establish and strengthen food recovery programs at community colleges across the U.S. If you attend or work at a community college, check out this can’t-miss opportunity here.

For New York-based orgs: Sign a letter urging New York's Congressional Delegation to oppose any cuts to school meal programs. Use this form to stop two key proposals that would have devastating impacts on New York students, schools, and communities.

Social Impact Spotlight

Shedding light on companies leading by example and engaging in the food system in a meaningful way

**Rocket Social Impact Launches Pro-Bono Initiative to Help Nonprofits Grow**

Rocket Social Impact—a consulting agency that specializes in helping brands and organizations (you guessed it) develop their social impact programming—announced its first new pro-bono initiative, Project Launchpad (yes, we’re here for this pun). Quick background: Rocket has worked with some of the biggest food companies (think Dunkin’, Popeyes, and Burger King) to revitalize and maximize the impact of their corporate giving platforms.

Now with Project Launchpad, Rocket is using its experience and insights to create individualized plans for nonprofits—at no cost to them. The goal of these custom programs is to help nonprofits expand their reach, achieve measurable growth, secure partnerships, strengthen their capacity, and more. We truly love to see it! Learn more about this innovative program here.

“Food Is Medicine”:
What Is It And Where Is It Headed?

There are two things the food systems world loves: buzz words and phrases and slightly random, topic-designated months/days. This section happens to feature both! In honor of National Nutrition Month (which I’m sure you’re all celebrating), we’re breaking down the often over-used, less-often understood term Food is Medicine.

To be fair, Food is Medicine’s cultural, political, and clinical presence has hugely expanded in the last 10 years—and even though more people seem to be getting the message, it can be unclear what actually constitutes “food is medicine.” But as always, the Food Policy Debrief team is here to break it down for you. Disclaimer: This section is slightly longer than usual, as we wanted to really do this topic justice. We hope you’ll find it interesting and stay until the end! But anyways, let’s get into it.

What actually is Food is Medicine?

The broad definition of Food is Medicine is “the close integration of food and nutrition interventions in the clinical setting.” In normal-people words, it’s the practice of using food to help prevent chronic diseases (such as Type 2 diabetes or hypertension) and using food and nutrition education to help improve health outcomes with other illnesses such as cancer or HIV/AIDS.

One of the easiest ways to conceptualize this is through the Food Is Medicine Pyramid, seen below (and if you look at it and have no idea what any of it means, don’t freak out. We’re going to channel Abby Lee Miller and run through it).

The main takeaway from this period is quite straight-forward: Food is Medicine operates on a spectrum, with interventions becoming more specific to the illness and severity of that illness. So as you go up the pyramid, the interventions get more specific not only to populations, but also to medical conditions.

At the bottom of the pyramid, you’ll see programs meant to keep the population at large healthier, like SNAP and WIC. These are meant to reduce food insecurity, which we know is linked to poorer health outcomes and chronic illness.

Stick with us here: As you go up, you’ll see programs such as produce prescriptions (where health care providers actually prescribe fruits and vegetables to patients) and nutritious food referrals (where people can get funds to help them buy discounted nutritious foods). Often, these programs are limited to individuals with certain conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension, that are more easily managed with a healthier diet. Towards the top of the pyramid, we see interventions like medically tailored groceries and meals, which help improve outcomes for individuals with more serious conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, renal failure, etc.—folks who may not be able to prepare meals for themselves as a result.

Much like a doctor wouldn’t prescribe more medicine than you need for a certain condition, the same is true for these programs: The more severe and specific your needs, the more specific the intervention.

Why is this important? In the U.S. today, 13.5% of households are facing food insecurity, and 6 in 10 people are facing a chronic illness such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and cancer. Because of this, it should come as no surprise to you that 90% of our healthcare costs are spent treating these illnesses. There are also significant socioeconomic disparities afoot, with low-income, rural, Black, and Hispanic households facing both higher rates of food insecurity and higher rates of chronic illness.

A somewhat brief, not-at-all boring history lesson

We’ll spare you the long saga of how food and herbal medicine has been used in clinical settings all the way back to any and every ancient civilization—but it’s true. We will, however, point to two important pieces of somewhat recent history that catapulted the modern U.S. food is medicine movement forward: WIC and medically tailored meals.

WIC is sometimes referred to as “the mother of Food is Medicine programs,” and for good reason. Initially piloted in 1972 and made a nationwide Federal program in 1975, WIC was an attempt to improve health outcomes among mothers and babies through improved nutrition. The results? Lower infant and maternal mortality, a reduction in premature births, better access to pre- and post-natal care for both mothers and babies, and even better immunization rates. WIC showed that combining a food and nutrition-based intervention in the traditional medical setting could help reduce food insecurity and improve health. We love.

A decade after WIC was made a Federal program, there was another epidemic sweeping across America that showed the effectiveness of food as an intervention. In 1985, a hospice volunteer in New York City by the name of Ganga Stone first encountered patients dying of HIV/AIDS who could not prepare meals for themselves given their condition. She, along with friends, quickly got to work not only preparing and delivering meals for patients dying from HIV/AIDS, but also recovering meals from restaurants (we love food recovery!) which eventually became the organization God’s Love We Deliver.

Through this work, they proved that improved nutrition was not only providing dignity and hope to those who were stigmatized because of their condition (and often because of being LGBTQ), but also improving their prognoses. As more clinical treatments for HIV began to emerge, it became clear that better nutrition was associated with better adherence and retention in care. In 1990, the Ryan White Care Act codified the provision of meals and groceries to people living with HIV/AIDS as part of the clinical and support services to which they’re entitled. Even today, many of the members of the Food Is Medicine Coalition got their start responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis through nutrition, even as their scopes have expanded to other illnesses and programs.

What does Food is Medicine actually look like in practice?

1. Medically Tailored Meals and Groceries

According to the Food Is Medicine Coalition, a Medically Tailored Meal (MTM) is a set of meals “delivered to individuals living with severe, complex and chronic illness through a referral from a medical professional or healthcare plan.” There are also medically tailored groceries, which is exactly what it sounds like. So after an individual with a serious illness has been identified by and referred by their doctor to a food program, they will ideally be delivered fresh meals, sometimes frozen, or a combination at least weekly. These meals and groceries are assembled according to their specific condition, in conjunction with a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, who also provides additional nutrition education.

And to say MTMs are effective might be an understatement: One recent study estimated that if MTMs were made more broadly available to eligible Americans, it could result in 1.6 million averted excess hospitalizations and $13.6 billion in reduced healthcare costs per year. How nuts is that?

2. Produce Prescriptions and Incentives

Ok, so as we mentioned earlier, a Produce P rescriptio n is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: It’s when a doctor provides a prescription to a patient for fresh fruits and vegetables in order to help their medical condition. These prescriptions can come in many forms, such as a visit to a food pharmacy in a hospital or a voucher to be used at a farmers market or grocery store. For an example of example of an organization Wholesome Wave’s innovative programming

While the data on Produce Prescriptions (sometimes called Produce Rx) isn’t as gobsmacking as it is on MTMs, it’s still incredibly promising. Produce Rx participants often see significant reductions in BMI and A1c, a key measure of diabetes control. These small incremental changes make a big difference in the long run when it comes to our healthcare system.

These programs are often financed by private and philanthropic dollars, including partnerships with hospitals and health insurance companies who see the incentives to reduce costs, but many programs rely on blending and braiding multiple funding streams such as Ryan White, TEFAP, GusNIP, and Medicaid. Which gets us to the elephant in the room: policy.

Where is the policy landscape headed?

That’s a great question, and as most things right now, it’s pretty up in the air.

On the one hand, the Biden Administration made significant progress on this front. It promoted food is medicine interventions as part of their White House Strategy on Hunger, and clarified guidelines for how states could use Medicaid to finance interventions for health related social needs, which was recently rescinded by the Trump Administration.

But then on the other hand, there’s the Make America Healthy Again agenda, which despite some, let’s just say problematic, elements, has encouraged a return to whole foods and preventing chronic illness through improved diets, as well as removing certain food additives that have links to poor health outcomes. And while bits of that are certainly things we can work with conceptually, what does it mean when the approach to budgets and agencies thus far has been slash and burn? To be frank, to reap the rewards of Food is Medicine requires some investment.

It’s Advocacy O’Clock

As always, here’s where you come in and where your voice can come in handy as we move forward:

Protect SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid: With the House’s recently passed Budget Resolution calling for $230 Billion in savings over the next ten years, programs like SNAP and WIC might be in crosshairs for massive cuts or elimination altogether. Call your Members of Congress to tell them you care about these programs and that we should be making investments in these key prevention efforts (that are on our pyramid above)—not gutting them.

Encourage your Members of Congress and State Legislators to expand FIM interventions. There have been multiple bills at the Federal level that deserve advocacy, but your state (and even local!) governments can play a role in financing and supporting these kinds of interventions, too. We’ll keep you updated on any developments on this front.
Connect to your local food is medicine program: There are programs in nearly every corner of the country, often leveraging local food systems, to provide nutritious food, prevent chronic disease, and provide dignity to your neighbors with serious illnesses. Use the Food is Medicine Coalition’s search tool to locate the program closest to you! They might need donations, volunteers, or even a like/share on social media.

Even though there is so much more to say about Food is Medicine, we hope, at the very least, it is no longer Greek to you. Happy National Nutrition Month!