How Food Is Medicine programs can improve health and curb health care costs

“The prospective impact of Food Is Medicine programs could be huge. An estimated 90% of the $4.3 trillion annual cost of health care in the United States is spent on medical care for chronic disease, and for many of these diseases — including heart disease — diet is a major risk factor,” said Kevin G. Volpp, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, scientific lead of the American Heart Association’s Food Is Medicine initiative — Health Care by Food™.

“We have a health system that’s been wired around the treatment of disease,” said Volpp, who is also the founding director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School in Philadelphia. “As a nation, we are first in health care spending but lowest in life expectancy compared to other peer countries. We’ve tried to improve health largely by reacting to disease with expensive medical care, but we believe there are more cost-effective alternatives to keep people healthy, prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD), and improve health equity.”