As summer ended, I found myself enjoying a cup of Katie Huffman's watermelon mint gazpacho at the Falmouth Farmers Market.
“I puree watermelon and mint and then I add different peppers that are available as well as red onion and cucumber,” she says.
It is delicious. But we're not going to deep-dive on gazpacho or any single dish or ingredient this time. I've come to the market because health is on my mind. Not just mine, I mean health in general.
“Food is making people sick and it’s not being considered at all in our health care system, or our government, or in other aspects of our life,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the head of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. “Maybe half of all poor health in the country is directly derived from poor diet. And yet our healthcare system still ignores it.”
I was speaking to Dr. Mozaffarian on the sidelines of an event in Nantucket to promote his new book, titled, unsurprisingly, Food Is Medicine. The book launches this month.
“We're shockingly sick,” he says. “And we've done the numbers. About 10,000 Americans are killed every week from poor nutrition. And we just sort of shrug. September 11th was a horrible event for our country, right? Three thousand Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. Three times that die every week from our food!”
Expressed that way, the numbers are kind of overwhelming. That's why I've made my way to the farmers market—to get grounded, and reconnect with some of the people who are on the front lines of food as medicine every day.
“I’m an individual that's dealt with multiple complex chronic illnesses for the majority of my life,” says Rachel Berman. She coaches people at the market about how to make best use of state and federal food security assistance. And she helps them apply lessons she's learned for herself.
“I've gone through different phases using food as medicine,” she says. “A lot of times with some success, in terms of getting inflammation down, pain down, and just making sure to utilize more fresh fruits, vegetables, and produce. Trying to go more plant-based, less processed foods, less supermarket-based conventional foods, and just more fresh, unprocessed foods in their natural um state and as local as possible.”
A few stalls down, Sandy Covey sells homemade bone broth at the market. Medicinal benefits are a native part of her sales pitch.
I noticed her bone broth booth has at least two health assertions on it: “boosts immunity, contains collagen.”
“Absolutely,” Covey says. “It's great for your hair, skin, and nails. For people with chronic G.I. issues, it can help heal and make your flare-ups uh longer in between. It really does help heal your body from the inside out.”
Here’s another overwhelming number for you. Experts estimate food-related deaths and illness cost the economy about one and a half trillion dollars a year. That's like a second defense budget, and then some.
And that's where the concept of food as medicine can be very powerful – where it sets up an apples-to-apples comparison of money spent now on healthy food, versus money spent later on unprevented illness. Like six dollars a day for Sandy Covey's bone broth.
“It's going to be more expensive going to the doctor than it would be to invest that six dollars a day in your health. Worth the added health benefits that it’s going to give me in the long run.”
And so, even though he says the system is broken, Dr. Mozaffarian strikes an optimistic tone in his new book.He argues, the potential savings alone could lend strong momentum to a nationwide Food is Medicine movement.
“Things like heart disease or diabetes, or women who are pregnant who are high risk for poor outcomes, heart failure, kidney disease, even depression and mental health is now being effectively treated with food,” he says. “And you see the return on investment within not years but within weeks or months. And in some cases, food as medicine is being prescribed by doctors, paid for by healthcare, and saving money for the health care system. And almost nothing in healthcare saves money.”
Tufts Food is Medicine Institute: https://tuftsfoodismedicine.org/
