- Doctors’ custom food prescriptions featuring beans and greens are helping patients prevent illness.
- A doctor said healthy food plans can help address high healthcare costs and chronic illness rates.
- This article is part of “Trends in Healthcare,” a series about the innovations and industry leaders shaping patient care.
Picture this: At your next health checkup, your doctor hands you a prescription for potatoes instead of pills.
For some patients, this scenario is becoming a reality.
Providing personalized recommendations for healthy food — along with information on how to prepare it and the resources to afford it — is fast becoming a trend in preventive healthcare. Recent research has examined how nutrition may help lower healthcare costs and improve health outcomes, and the US Department of Health and Human Services held its first summit on the topic this year.
Food prescriptions could be a major tool in helping people get healthier faster, and for less money, by treating or preventing disease before it becomes severe, said Dr. Dexter Shurney, a board-certified physician in preventive medicine, lifestyle medicine, and public health. Food as medicine can also address some of the big challenges facing the healthcare system, such as the ballooning medical bills that can make even basic care, such as regular checkups, difficult to access.
Shurney initially trained as a surgeon and in 2017 became the chief medical officer of Foodsmart, a telehealth company that connects patients with registered dietitians to create custom meal plans and resources to tackle food insecurity.
“I made that pivot because a lot of the things I was treating as a surgeon I saw were preventable, and I thought there needed to be more done on the prevention side,” he told Business Insider.
But simply telling people to eat their veggies and cut back on processed food can be complicated. Healthy food can be hard to access and may not always fit the culinary traditions and eating habits people grew up with.
Take Maya Garcia, one of Shurney’s clients at Foodsmart, who’d been trying since 2020 to manage worsening chronic illness and related weight gain. But their weight loss attempts led to yo-yo dieting and cycles of excessive restriction and binge eating.
When Garcia, who lives in Chicago, found Foodsmart through their insurance provider, they were given a meal plan that included foods like corn, cactus, and dark chocolate that were nutritious and fit into their Indigenous heritage.
“Accessing enough nutritious food has been a challenge for me,” Garcia said. “I’ve learned not only about foods that help promote better nutrition for me, but they’ve also incorporated a lot of ancestral foods that I was craving but didn’t realize were so nutritious. A lot of that involves letting go of dieting rules and instead looking for what my body needs and what my body craves.”
While personalized nutrition needs can vary widely, Shurney said simple swaps, such as eating more whole foods and prioritizing nutrient-dense plants and lean protein, can make a huge impact — and some of the most beneficial foods are in your local grocery store.
Beans are a secret superfood
Shurney said one of the big misconceptions about food as medicine is that nutritious ingredients are expensive or hard to find.
“People think that a healthy diet has to cost more, a lot of the staples of a healthy diet are very inexpensive,” he said.
One of his top recommendations is cheap, easy to cook, available in every grocery store, and it’s probably in your kitchen right now.
Beans, despite their humble nature, have been called a superfood because they’re a rich source of plant-based protein. Chickpeas, for instance, contain about 14 grams of protein in a one-cup serving.
Beans are also high in fiber, an important nutrient for digestive health.
Some of the longest-living people in the world eat beans regularly, often with simple preparations like soups or salads. Because of the variety of beans available, they can be a versatile addition to recipes and are easy to cook in bulk for healthy meal prepping.
“Beans should be part of your diet every day,” Shurney said.
Potatoes are an easy, filling way to get more nutrients
While starchy carbs often get a bad rap, potatoes are actually a great way to eat healthfully on a budget as long as you’re not reaching for fries or chips. Potatoes are rich in vitamin C and potassium, which helps promote healthy blood pressure.
“Often misunderstood, regular potatoes are a great source of potassium and have a long shelf life. They are inexpensive and can be prepared in many healthy ways, such as baking, boiling, or steaming,” Shurney said.
Preparation is key here, and basic kitchen skills, such as how to use knives safely and make foods delicious by steaming or roasting, can help people take better care of their health.
As a result, education is a big part of implementing food prescriptions so that people with limited resources can take advantage of affordable options for healthy eating and stretch their budget or SNAP (supplement nutrition assistance program, often known as food stamps) benefits further.
“You need to have that education to say, what can I actually afford on a budget?” Shurney said.
Green veggies like broccoli could help stave off cancer and other illnesses
It’s no secret that eating your greens is good health advice, but kale and broccoli offer even more benefits than you might think, according to Shurney.
Cruciferous veggies are some of the most nutritious foods because they’re high in antioxidants, which may help protect against cancer. Leafy greens are also a major part of the Mediterranean diet, which is widely considered the healthiest diet in the world.
The challenge in getting people to eat their greens is convincing them that a little cooking skill can make veggies taste delicious.
“If people don’t have access to the food, they can’t afford it, it’s not available, they don’t even know what it is, they might look at a broccoli and say, that doesn’t look like it’s going to taste real good,” Shurney said. “They have to experience that it can taste good. There’s more than one way to cook it. If you don’t like the way that it tastes the first time, maybe you cook it differently or season it differently. You can find a way that you like it, but you have to make it accessible.”
Simple recipes like roasting veggies, sautéing them with an acid like citrus juice or vinegar, and seasoning well can help make healthy cooking less intimidating.
Blueberries could help protect your brain health
Emerging research suggests that eating well is just as important for a healthy mind as it is for a healthy body.
Loading up on brightly colored produce like berries, peppers, herbs, and the like — sometimes called “eating the rainbow” — can help you get a variety of micronutrients, Shurney said.
“I always say seven colors, and we’re not talking about fruit loops, so we’re talking about real food,” he said. “We’ve known for a long time that increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables creates health.”
While berries can be a bit more expensive than other fruit, a budget-friendly option is shopping the freezer aisle, since frozen produce is as healthy as fresh, or buying on sale and freezing yourself to use later.
Seeds like flax and chia are a great source of healthy fats
Shurney also recommends seeds like chia and flax as a way to get more fiber in your diet as well as omega-3 fatty acids, a type of healthy fat linked to better heart health and lower inflammation.
Eating more nuts and seeds can also help you reduce your intake of processed foods, such as chips and other popular snacks.
Reaching for whole foods and being mindful of food labels can be a simple way to start eating healthier since ultra-processed foods are linked to health issues like a higher risk of cancer and heart disease.
Shurney said if there are more than five ingredients on the label, it’s a processed food. “There are little tricks like that that you can teach people that stay with them and help them to sustain this kind of lifestyle that you’re nudging them into.”
