Food Is Medicine

Imagine you go to your doctor to manage a chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure. Instead of being given medication, you receive fresh, healthy food to manage your condition. That might sound bizarre, but practices like this are becoming more and more common in South Dakota and nationwide.

Poor diets are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the United States and worldwide (G. B. D. Diet Collaborators, 2019). So, it makes sense that eating healthier can help us prevent and manage chronic diseases. This is the big idea behind a movement called “Food Is Medicine” (Mozaffarian et al., 2022). Food Is Medicine describes a group of policy, public health, and clinical interventions that all aim to provide healthy foods to people with the highest risk or burden of chronic disease. Food Is Medicine programs can range from dietitian- and chef-crafted meals being home delivered to patients with multiple chronic diseases, to incentivizing people using benefit programs to buy more fruits and vegetables.

Nutrition experts at SDSU Extension manage Food Is Medicine programs like Dakota Food Rx and Double Up Food Bucks – South Dakota. We also organize the South Dakota Food Is Medicine Network. This is an informal network of people interested in expanding Food Is Medicine programs in our state. Together, we can expand and strengthen these programs so that all South Dakotans have access to the food they need to live their healthiest lives.

The video included on this page explains Food Is Medicine in more detail, so you can learn even more about these programs. 

G. B. D. Diet Collaborators. (2019). Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet, 393(10184), 1958–1972.
Mozaffarian, D., Blanck, H. M., Garfield, K. M., Wassung, A., & Petersen, R. (2022). A Food is Medicine approach to achieve nutrition security and improve health. Nat Med, 28(11), 2238–2240.