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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #57: Using food as medicine

Health care is typically focused on pills and procedures. But when ailing individuals get meals delivered to their residences that are tailored to their medical conditions, health outcomes improve and medical costs decline. That was the conclusion of a study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2019, which compared the experience of 500 adults in Massachusetts who received medically tailored meals, compared to about 500 who did not. Among the meal program participants, who faced significant barriers to following an appropriate diet (such as poverty or food insecurity), the number of subsequent inpatient admissions was about 50 percent lower than of those not participating, and average monthly medical costs were more than 16 percent lower.