cheryl
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Sometimes Food Is The Best Medicine - Forbes
As a physician, I regularly write prescriptions for medications to help my patients get better. But can I write a prescription for food? This may sound like a strange question, but a survey of doctors found that most wished they could write prescriptions for nutritious foods. Those doctors are aware of what a growing body of evidence shows: access to nutritious foods plays an outsize role in wellness.
I began to think about the relationship between food and health when I was a resident working in a busy Boston hospital. A patient I’ll call Ted came into the emergency room seeking treatment for vague symptoms that didn’t seem to add up to any specific diagnosis. I grabbed a chair and talked to Ted for a few minutes, and eventually he came to trust me. “Doc,” Ted finally confessed, “I’m tired and I need a meal.”
Ted is an example of someone who’s “food insecure.” Food insecurity is different from hunger. Anyone who goes for a long bike ride or skips lunch may experience hunger. But food insecurity refers specifically to “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food,” according to the Dept. of Agriculture. 15 million U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2017. That’s 40 million Americans — 6.5 million of whom are children.
As a physician, I regularly write prescriptions for medications to help my patients get better. But can I write a prescription for food? This may sound like a strange question, but a survey of doctors found that most wished they could write prescriptions for nutritious foods. Those doctors are aware of what a growing body of evidence shows: access to nutritious foods plays an outsize role in wellness.
I began to think about the relationship between food and health when I was a resident working in a busy Boston hospital. A patient I’ll call Ted came into the emergency room seeking treatment for vague symptoms that didn’t seem to add up to any specific diagnosis. I grabbed a chair and talked to Ted for a few minutes, and eventually he came to trust me. “Doc,” Ted finally confessed, “I’m tired and I need a meal.”
Ted is an example of someone who’s “food insecure.” Food insecurity is different from hunger. Anyone who goes for a long bike ride or skips lunch may experience hunger. But food insecurity refers specifically to “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food,” according to the Dept. of Agriculture. 15 million U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2017. That’s 40 million Americans — 6.5 million of whom are children.