Food Is Medicine, Let's Treat It That Way (feat. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian)

Eighty-five percent of all U.S. health care spending goes toward managing chronic diseases connected to poor diet and nutrition. Yet most doctors receive little to no meaningful training in nutrition. As a result, food and nutrition remain absent from doctor–patient conversations, with medications the default option for most ailments.

On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, about why that gap exists, what it will take to close it, and what's presently working.

Increasingly, doctors are beginning to prescribe produce or meals medically tailored to a patient's condition, with the cost covered by the patient's health plan. And a growing number of states are currently testing or planning to test food-as-medicine programs through Medicaid. Meanwhile, a third of U.S. medical schools have committed to meaningful nutrition education for doctors, something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

"Food is the single biggest challenge and opportunity, not just in health care, but also in our economy and the environment," says Dr. Mozaffarian. "And it's all fixable."