Food is Medicine: Prioritizing equitable implementation

The Food Is Medicine (FIM) movement encompasses health care and community-based interventions that use food and nutrition to prevent, manage, and treat diet-related health conditions, ranging from produce prescriptions to medically tailored meals. While the movement’s goals are well-intended and have attracted significant investment, we describe potential pitfalls and opportunities for improvement in the execution of the top three tiers of the FIM pyramid (i.e., healthy food prescriptions, medically tailored groceries, and medically tailored meals). One concern is that some populations—specifically, people living with a lower income and those experiencing food insecurity—may be inadvertently overlooked because of a lack of health insurance or health care access. Rather than suggesting we abandon health care‒based FIM delivery, which would deny access to millions who could benefit through existing insurance coverage, we propose a dual approach that strengthens health care‒based implementation while developing complementary pathways for those currently excluded.