America is sick. Healthier food can help patients in recovery.
The two of us, a doctor and a lawmaker, are encouraged by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s successful Senate confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services. The three of us share a common belief that guides our work: The American health care system is broken.
Right now, we are treating symptoms instead of addressing the root causes of disease. The good news? There is a solution within reach.
A growing “food as medicine” movement is proving that good nutrition can prevent and even reverse chronic illnesses.
The problem we’re facing is enormous. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults and 20 percent of children are obese. Type 2 diabetes affects about 38 million Americans. Medicare spends more than $1 trillion annually on health care, with one-quarter of its beneficiaries suffering from diabetes. If we don’t act, obesity-related health care costs could hit $4.1 trillion over the next decade. Yet just 3 percent of federal health care spending goes toward preventive medicine. This imbalance isn’t sustainable — and it’s certainly not acceptable.
Drawing on lessons from last year’s House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing on “Investing in a Healthier America” — where one of us led the discussion as chair and the other provided expert testimony — we continued to ask ourselves: What if we approached health care differently? What if we made nutrition the foundation of health care? This vision is an attainable reality now if we focus on workable, practical ways to truly “Make America Healthy Again.”
Our modern food system is driving this crisis. Ultra-processed foods — packed with sugar, refined starches and artificial additives — make up 60 percent of our daily calories. These so-called “frankenfoods” dominate 73 percent of what’s available in the U.S. food supply. They are fueling diabetes, obesity and countless preventable chronic diseases. The result? A staggering 93 percent of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, and our health care system is overwhelmed with chronic conditions that could have been prevented.
Unfortunately, doctors and health care providers currently aren’t equipped to fight this problem. Most medical schools don’t even prioritize nutrition as a part of their curriculum. As a result, patients rarely hear about the role food can play in their health, even though they trust their providers to guide them.
The U.S. health care system is failing to keep pace with dozens of countries around the world, with our national life expectancy set to drop from the already low rank of 49 to an abysmal 66 out of more than 200 countries by 2050. This despite our spending trillions of dollars more on health than any other developed nation. This is a missed opportunity we cannot afford to ignore.
But there’s hope. Positive change is starting to take root. Medicare Advantage plans are offering “food as medicine” benefits, providing healthy meals for patients with chronic conditions. In Congress, bipartisan support is growing for nutrition-based solutions like medically tailored meals — healthy food prescribed to patients to aid recovery and reduce hospital readmissions.
Programs like these are win-wins: They improve health outcomes and save money. In a recent study on medically tailored meals at Cleveland Clinic, after a six month follow-up period, there was a savings of $12,046 per patient for those patients who received meals for three months. Scaling programs like these could save Medicare hundreds of billions of dollars.
As chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, Rep. Buchanan joined with his colleague across the aisle, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), to create the Congressional Preventive Health and Wellness Caucus, with a key focus on food as medicine. The Ways and Means Committee has already passed a bipartisan pilot program to provide medically tailored meals for patients leaving the hospital. But while these steps are encouraging, they are not enough. We need to do more, and quickly.
Here’s how we can make that vision a reality:
- Invest in Prevention: Programs like medically tailored meals can shift health care from managing disease to preventing and reversing it. These initiatives have the potential to shift our health care system from “disease management” to “disease reversal.” As Dr. Hyman shared in his testimony, “In America, we mop up the floor while the sink overflows. How do we turn off the faucet, so we deal with the root cause of the problem, which is the food that’s driving the chronic disease epidemic?”
- Reform Medical Education: We need to ensure that future doctors and medical professionals are trained in nutrition. With $17 billion in federal funding going to medical education, there’s no excuse for ignoring food as a tool for healing.
- Hold Bad Actors Accountable: We need to heighten research into the effects of harmful additives and ultra-processed foods can protect public health — especially for kids. We need to give parents the tools they need to make informed decisions about their children’s nutrition and food.
We need to start investing in nutrition as medicine. The evidence is clear: In one study, 60 percent of Type 2 diabetes patients reversed their condition within a year by following a nutrition-focused approach. It’s undeniable: Better food leads to better health, lower costs and longer, healthier and happier lives.
We are at a critical turning point. Let’s choose a healthier, more sustainable path — one where food isn’t just part of the problem but a central part of the solution. This is our moment to act, and we’re ready to work with Secretary Kennedy, congressional colleagues and concerned Americans to help make it happen.
Vern Buchanan is vice chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of the Health Subcommittee. Dr. Mark Hyman is the chairman of Food Fix Campaign and a 15-time New York Times best-selling author.
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