Challenged by local funders to identify complex social problems and innovative ways to address them, Patti Habeck, President of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, found an answer in lettuce. Along with Fork Farms of Appleton, Wis., the food bank is deploying small-scale, hydroponic farming systems at food pantries, schools and other…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
As a graduate student at Yale University, Emma Stein marveled at the sheer convenience of meal preparation kits like Blue Apron and Plated. When it came time for her to develop her master’s thesis in public health, it wasn’t a stretch for her to wonder how such kits might be…
It’s the rare celebrity chef who is also a policy wonk, but that at least partly describes Michel Nischan, a three-time James Beard Award winning chef who’s as conversant as anyone in Congress on the nuances of the farm bill. Nischan is also a food activist and innovator who figured…
The charitable food system — with its close connection to vulnerable populations — seems like the perfect environment to pursue strategies aimed at controlling diabetes. But finding those solutions is proving as complex as the disease itself. Feeding America helped shed light on possible solutions when it completed a rigorous…
When Anna Trautwein looks back on a program aimed at improving the health of diabetic food-pantry clients in Essex County, N.J., she sees some stand-out success stories: the handful of people who lost a significant amount of weight; the few who were able to wean themselves off some prescription drugs;…
There is a new category of food distribution in the works, and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is helping to define it. Rooted in the concept of food as medicine, SFMFB is working with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to develop a network of “food pharmacies,” which look…
It’s fair to say that food banks have a bit of a love-hate relationship with food drives. While they are great for engaging the community and bringing in much-needed food, they are less cost-efficient than cash and can generate heaps of work on the back end in terms of checking…
The head of the FDA put the transformative impact of good nutrition into perspective when he said in a March 2018 speech that the public health gains of improved diet “would almost certainly dwarf any single medical innovation or intervention we could discover.” Who knew that one of the most…