- Doctors’ personalized food prescriptions, including beans and green vegetables, help patients prevent disease.
- A doctor said healthy eating plans can help reduce high health care costs and chronic disease rates.
- This article is part of “Healthcare Trends“, a series about the innovations and industry leaders shaping patient care.
Picture this: At your next checkup, your doctor gives you a prescription for potatoes instead of pills.
For some patients, this scenario becomes reality.
Providing personalized recommendations for a healthy diet – along with information on how to prepare it and the resources needed to afford it – is quickly becoming a trend in preventive health care. Recent research has examined how nutrition can help reduce health care costs and improve health outcomes, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services held its first summit on the topic this year.
Dietary prescriptions could be a major tool to help people improve their health more quickly and affordably, treating or preventing illnesses before they get worse, said Dr. Dexter Shurney, a board-certified physician in medicine. preventive, lifestyle medicine and public health. . Food as medicine can also address some of the big challenges facing the healthcare system, such as exploding medical bills that can make it difficult to access even basic care, like regular checkups.
Shurney originally trained as a surgeon and in 2017 became the chief medical officer of Foodsmart, a telehealth company that connects patients with registered dietitians to create personalized meal plans and resources to combat obesity. food insecurity.
“I made this change because a lot of the things I treated as a surgeon were preventable, and I thought more needed to be done on prevention,” he told Business Insider.
But it can be complicated to simply tell people to eat vegetables and reduce their intake of processed foods. Healthy foods can be difficult to access and don’t always fit with the culinary traditions and eating habits that people grew up with.
Take Maya Garcia, one of Shurney’s clients at Foodsmart, who since 2020 had been trying to manage a worsening chronic illness and the weight gain that comes with it. But their weight loss attempts led to yo-yo dieting and cycles of excessive restriction and binge eating.
When Garcia, who lives in Chicago, discovered Foodsmart through her insurer, it offered her a meal plan that included foods like corn, cacti and dark chocolate, which were nutritious and fit into their indigenous heritage.
“Accessing enough nutritious food has been a challenge for me,” Garcia said. “Not only have I discovered foods that help me promote better nutrition, but they have also incorporated many ancestral foods that I craved but didn’t know were so nutritious. This greatly involves part of abandoning diet rules and instead, I seek out what my body needs and craves.”
While personalized nutritional needs can vary widely, Shurney said simple swaps, like eating more whole foods and prioritizing nutrient-dense plants and lean proteins, can have a huge impact — and some of the foods More beneficial can be found at your local grocery store.
Beans are a secret superfood
Shurney said one of the biggest misconceptions about food as medicine is that nutritious ingredients are expensive or hard to find.
“People think that a healthy diet has to cost more, and that many of the basic elements of a healthy diet are very cheap,” he said.
One of her top recommendations is cheap, easy to cook, available in every grocery store, and it’s probably in your kitchen right now.
Beans, despite their humble nature, have been called a superfood because they are a rich source of plant-based protein. Chickpeas, for example, contain about 14 grams of protein per 1-cup serving.
Beans are also high in fiber, an important nutrient for digestive health.
Some of the world’s oldest people eat beans regularly, often with simple preparations like soups or salads. Because of the variety of beans available, they can be a versatile addition to recipes and are easy to cook in large quantities to make healthy meals.
“Beans should be part of your diet every day,” Shurney said.
Potatoes are a simple and nutritious way to get more nutrients
While starchy foods often get a bad rap, potatoes are actually a great way to eat healthy on a budget, as long as you don’t eat fries or chips. Potatoes are rich in vitamin C and potassium, which helps support healthy blood pressure.
“Often misunderstood, regular potatoes are an excellent source of potassium and have a long shelf life. They are inexpensive and can be prepared in many healthy ways, such as baking, boiling or steaming” , Shurney said.
Preparation is key here, and basic cooking skills, like how to use knives safely and prepare delicious foods by steaming or roasting them, can help people take better care of their health.
As a result, education plays an important role in implementing dietary requirements so that people with limited resources can take advantage of affordable options for healthy eating and further stretch their budget or SNAP benefits. nutritional supplement, often called food stamps).
“You have to have that education to know: what can I actually afford on a budget? » said Shurney.
Green vegetables like broccoli could help prevent cancer and other diseases
It’s no secret that eating green vegetables is good health advice, but kale and broccoli offer even more benefits than you think, according to Shurney.
Cruciferous vegetables are among the most nutritious foods because they are rich in antioxidants, which may help protect against cancer. Leafy greens are also an important part of the Mediterranean diet, widely considered the healthiest diet in the world.
The challenge in getting people to eat their greens is convincing them that a little cooking skill can make vegetables taste delicious.
“If people don’t have access to food, they can’t afford it, it’s not available, they don’t even know what it is, they might look at a broccoli and saying it doesn’t look like it’s going to taste really good,” Shurney said. “They have to experience that it can taste good. There are many ways to cook it. If you don’t like the taste the first time, maybe you can cook it differently or season it differently. You can find a way that you like it, but you have to make it accessible.
Simple recipes like roasting vegetables, sautéing add them to an acid like citrus juice or vinegar, and a good seasoning can help make healthy cooking less intimidating.
Blueberries May Help Protect Your Brain Health
New research suggests that eating well is just as important for a healthy mind as it is for a healthy body.
Stock up on brightly colored produce like berries, peppers, herbs, etc. — sometimes called “eating the rainbow” — can help you get a variety of micronutrients, Shurney said.
“I always say seven colors, and we’re not talking about fruit loops, so we’re talking about real food,” he said. “We have known for a long time that increasing your consumption of fruits and vegetables is beneficial for your health.”
Although berries can be a little more expensive than other fruits, an economical option is to buy from the freezer aisle, since frozen products are just as healthy as fresh, or to buy them on sale and freeze them for later. use later.
Seeds like flax and chia are a great source of healthy fats
Shurney also recommends seeds like chia and flax as a way to get more fiber in your diet as well as omega-3 fatty acids, a type of healthy fat linked to better heart health and reduced inflammation .
Eating more nuts and seeds can also help you reduce your intake of processed foods, like chips and other popular snacks.
Choosing whole foods and paying attention to food labels can be an easy way to start eating healthier, as ultra-processed foods are linked to health problems like a higher risk of cancer and heart disease.
Shurney said if there are more than five ingredients on the label, it is a processed food. “There are little tricks like that that you can teach people who stay with them and help them maintain that kind of lifestyle that you’re encouraging them to live in.”
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