‘Food as Medicine’ movement still going strong

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Experiments to try to help people eat healthier are still going strong, a panel of advocates said here at the recent International Fresh Produce Association meeting. 

Mollie Van Lieu, the vice president of nutrition and health at IFPA, who moderated the panel, said IFPA’s goal is to make produce prescriptions as a standard practice in clinical health care. 

Steve Brazeel, the founder and CEO of SunTerra Produce, a California company that grows, packages and ships fruits and vegetables, explained that he started Project FoodBox during the pandemic when his food service customers closed up and the Agriculture Department started a program to provide boxes of food to needy people.

The reaction to the food boxes was “joy, relief and tears” when people received milk, eggs and other protein as well as fruits and vegetables.  

Project FoodBox delivered more than 1.5 million boxes of food including to the  Navajo nation and when the USDA program ended, the California Association of Food Banks asked to continue the deliveries, Brazeel said.

Since May 2020 Project FoodBox has delivered more than 6 million food boxes, but now also provides medically tailored meals to Medicaid participants under Section 1115 waivers from the Social Security Act, Brazeel said. 

Angel Santiago, president and CEO of the Caribbean Produce Exchange LLC, a distributor of fresh produce and refrigerated foods in Puerto Rico, said that his company has delivered boxes of produce in emergencies since Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Since 2020, Santiago noted, the firm has been involved in a variety of “food as health” projects, including deliveries to senior citizens as part of a Medicare Advantage plan, incentives for fruit and vegetable purchases connected to PAN, Puerto Rico’s food stamp program, and research projects with Harvard and Tufts University. 

Melisssa Melshanker Ackerman, president and CEO of Planet Harvest, noted that she is in business with Ivanka Trump to figure out what to do with “excess” food production.

Ackerman said Planet Harvest’s Food Farmacy is working with a pharmaceutical company that makes GLP-1 drugs to prepare boxes of food to go to people who take the weight-loss drugs and with hospital systems on foods for women with high-risk pregnancies.