What is ‘food is medicine’? – 2 experts explain this decades-old approach to healthcare that is taking on new life

Mountains of scientific evidence support both the negative and positive effects of our eating habits on our health. Research shows that a healthy diet can help those suffering from chronic health conditions like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

This is where “food is medicine” comes in. Food is medicine, also known as “food as medicine” and “food prescriptions,” is a movement dedicated to providing healthy food – fruits, vegetables and sometimes healthy proteins – based on a clinician’s prescription in order to prevent, manage or treat specific clinical conditions.

Prescribing food to patients is intended to convey that food is just as important as medication for health and wellness.

As researchers whose work focuses on food access and health in rural communities, we have firsthand experience running food is medicine programs in our local area in northern Mississippi. This experience has shown us the benefits and limitations of these programs in our community.

Fighting food insecurity

Food is medicine programs can be delivered through curated food boxes, grocery vouchers and medically tailored meals. Most programs are collaborations between nonprofit organizations, health clinics and healthcare providers. The goal of food is medicine is to improve patient health, especially for those with chronic conditions, while reducing healthcare costs.

Increasingly, food is medicine programs have become lifelines for people with food insecurity. In 2024, more than 47 million Americans, including 7.3 million children, lived in food-insecure households – meaning they were at some point uncertain of having, or did not have, enough food for everyone in the household.

Internationally, the number of people experiencing hunger rises to roughly 673 million. Rural populations are more likely to be food insecure due to the loss of local grocery stores and distance from urban centers. Unlike a food bank, food is medicine programs provide only healthy foods, which are often curated by a dietitian, to optimize patient health.

Forward momentum

Though food is medicine isn’t formally connected to the Make American Healthy Again movement, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has brought new energy and attention to the concept. In January 2026, the second Trump administration launched a campaign encouraging Americans to “Eat Real Food.”

But the food is medicine movement actually began more than 60 years ago. One of the early providers who prescribed food as medicine was civil rights activist and multiple Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Jack Geiger. In the 1960s, he co-founded community health centers in South Boston and the Mississippi Delta.

When government officials chastised him for prescribing food to patients in the Delta, Geiger responded, “The last time I looked at my textbooks, the most specific therapy for malnutrition was food.”

Since then, thousands of community organizations like Community Servings and Project Open Hand have provided healthy food to vulnerable community members.

In 2023, the president of the American Heart Association convened an advisory group of researchers and physicians to review current food is medicine research and suggest next steps for work in this area. This advisory has suggested that these programs could help prevent or manage chronic conditions, saving the U.S. healthcare system an estimated US$4.3 trillion annually.

Food is medicine has also started to gain international momentum. In 2025, the Rockefeller Foundation supported a meeting of international scholars, policy experts and practitioners that established the Food Is Medicine Global Alliance. This organization plans to help integrate, sustainably finance and routinely deliver food is medicine programs worldwide by 2030. So far, it has released several reports highlighting the current food is medicine environment and made resources available to providers looking to start their own programs.

Food is medicine in our local community

Food is medicine programs can use food from local farms or grocery stores, and the means of getting the food to patients varies. The four projects we have run to date have been relatively small and local.

One was a food box pickup program that supplemented fruits and vegetables for 55 households whose members demonstrated food insecurity. We followed the participants for two years and found statistically significant reductions in weight, waist circumference and triglyceride levels in the primary adult participants.

For two of our other programs, including one that is ongoing, we partnered with local farmers. One was a pilot test of a food box delivery program for housebound people. Both the recipients of the food and the farmers reported high satisfaction with the program’s delivery and felt the program strengthened community connections while also supporting local agricultural livelihoods.

What other researchers have found

One recent large-scale literature review identified 14 trials of food is medicine interventions and found that these approaches often positively influenced diet quality and food security.

Another review of food is medicine programs for people with diabetes found significant increases in fruit and vegetable intake and reductions in blood sugar levels. This data supports our own previous findings.

However, the effect of food is medicine programs on long-term health outcomes has been inconsistent, in part because many trials have been too small or not rigorous enough to determine causation. In some cases, the “dose” – that is, the amount of food provided – is limited by grant funding. Our food box pickup project supplemented only four to five meals each week, which may have been insufficient to significantly improve all health outcomes.

Moreover, it will be important for researchers to consider the logistics of making these programs work in various local food environments. Global factors like changing weather patterns and, more recently, delays in fuel and supplies from the Strait of Hormuz have increased prices of staple food products like cereals and vegetable oil and led to shortages of cooking oil in some countries.

Food is medicine can be appealing because it makes intuitive sense. But going forward, larger, high-quality studies are needed to adequately track clinical outcomes from the various types of food is medicine programming. If studies show food is medicine is beneficial, it could lead to a shift in how healthcare practitioners approach diet for patients with chronic illness. Access to healthy food would be considered as essential as medications for patients with chronic illness.