Short video commentary by Brian Johnson highlighting findings from Dr. Mark Hyman’s book Food Fix. The speaker summarizes research on medically tailored meals for 1,000 chronically ill California Medicaid (Medi-Cal) patients, reporting a 32% reduction in health care costs and a 63% reduction in hospitalizations, and advocates aligning food and health policy to prevent chronic disease.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we discussed some of the fascinating research that is unequivocally proving the fact that food is effective medicine. The energetic and economic return on those invested food dollars is astonishing. Today we're going to look at one more study on how we can solve the health care and chronic disease crisis our world is facing. So let's flip our copies of Dr. Mark Hyman's brilliant book Food Fix to page 57. Mark tells us, and I quote, a similar effort is underway in California where researchers are studying the health care impact of providing nutritious meals to 1,000 chronically sick patients insured by California's Medicaid program, known as MEDI. California studies have shown a 32% reduction in health care costs and a 63% reduction in hospitalizations. Many of these programs are funded through private donations and coordinated by the National Food Is Medicine Coalition, which is a group of nonprofits that want to use nutrition to solve the health care and chronic disease crisis. The Food Is Medicine group hopes to get these medically tailored meals included in health coverage. He continues by saying these groups recognize what our federal government sadly does not. To tackle the crisis, our national food policies must be aligned with our health care policies. Instead of just treating rampant chronic diseases with medication and surgery, we have to start preventing and treating it with food. By the way, earlier in the book, Mark makes this important point. He tells us, and I quote, while Democrats argue to create Medicare for All and Republicans argue to reduce entitlements to bring down our $22 trillion national debt, both are missing the obvious fact. Fix the reason why we have those costs in the first place. Stop the flow of sick people into the system and the harm to our environment and climate by fixing the cause, the food system. That's today's plus one. Thank you, Mark, for sharing that wisdom. And thank you brilliant and passionate doctors and public health care researchers who conducted those studies. And thank you to all the individuals who financed them and to all those who participated in them. I say we thank them by putting that wisdom into action. Why? So we can change the world one person at a time together. Starting with you and me and our next meal today.
