Can Food Serve As Medicine?

We're learning more and more about how diet impacts health, and even combats or prevents some diseases. A new congressional group is taking a good hard look at the links between food, nutrition, and human health.  Deputy USDA Secretary Stephen Censky says he sees the agricultural community is embracing this new way of looking at food.

"The other fundamental challenge is how do we improve the human condition. Human Disease. We are just beginning to understand the role that nutrition and nutrients and diet has on our well-being as well as on chronic disease. This is same issue that the new food is medicine task group aims to tackle.

The task force was set up in the House of Representative's Hunger Caucus, and headed by congressman Jim McGovern from Massachusetts.

"We are building upon the foundation we have laid to bring into focus the impacts of hunger on our nation's health, to raise awareness related of the costs of hunger, to study the science behind the impacts of hunger to explore policy options to awareness.

Another member of the new working group is Congressman Roger Marshall from Kansas.

"Truly food is health. And we may disagree on how we get there, but we certainly on the goals and the objectives."

The Food is Medicine Working Group aims to highlight links between nutrition programs and health outcomes to better align agriculture and health policy.