Produce Prescriptions are Practical Policies

The road to a healthier America begins with supporting healthier foods.

When facing a monumental problem, you need to think outside the box for novel and creative solutions. America has a monumental health problem. 700,000 Americans died from heart disease, and 600,000 died from cancer in 2021.

Life expectancy in the US plateaued back in 2014, then fell in both 2020 and 2021. That might not sound surprising given the worldwide pandemic, but while the world as a whole saw life expectancy drop in 2020, the majority of the world had rebounded in 2021. Not the US.

There are over 40 nations that have a higher life expectancy than the United States. The average life expectancy of a male in the US is now 73 years old. Other countries have a life expectancy as high as 83 years old, a full decade longer than Americans. 

Thirty-seven million Americans have diabetes, a number that has more than doubled over the last 20 years. That is 11% of the US population and the highest among our comparable nations. Great Britain and Australia are around 5%.

We are the wealthiest, most technologically advanced, most powerful nation in the world, and yet our population dies young.

Universal healthcare is long overdue and would help improve America’s health problems, but partisan politics ensures that it is still a ways off. It doesn’t seem to matter that we can clearly see the benefits in peer nations with government healthcare systems.

Fortunately, that isn’t stopping academics, doctors, activists, and even some politicians from trying to make the situation better.

For the last several years, America has been conducting small studies involving produce prescriptions. Programs that allow your doctor to prescribe vegetables and fruits to improve your health.

These prescriptions are being given to people who have or are at risk for diabetes, heart disease, and who are at risk of health issues from obesity. As you would expect, a doctor writes a prescription for produce, which the patient can then take to any supporting location, such as markets or farms. Health insurance covers or helps cover the cost of the food.

The results thus far have been promising. So promising that the US government is expanding these programs across the country.

Rarely talked about are the so-called “food deserts” in America. There are millions of Americans living in these underserved communities suffering from a lack of access to healthier food options, which in turn is a detriment to their health.

In addition to helping patients, these prescription programs also benefit farmers and food distributors, rather than sending more money to large pharmaceutical and medical corporations.

These types of programs highlight a fundamental shift in American thinking—the search for ways to make Americans healthier while helping to support our farmers at the same time. A truly made-in-America approach focused on the working class.

Another avenue of this thinking is changing what foods America subsidizes.

America spends billions of your tax dollars to subsidize crops that go towards highly processed foods such as soybeans, wheat, rice, and corn. Corn syrup is now one of the most common additives in processed foods. 

These subsidized crops also subsidize the meat industries by providing lower-cost feed. There is no distinction in whether a crop is used to feed humans directly, is highly processed, or is used to feed animals in determining if the grower gains government subsidies. Over 40% of corn and 70% of soybeans are turned into animal feed. Most of the animal farms are owned by large, wealthy corporations. 

Welfare for corporations is a term coined to describe the process of subsidizing crops to benefit large corporations rather than people.

Additional subsidies go to the dairy and sugar industries. Sugar may be one of the most abhorrent uses of government subsidies that exists. A program is in place to ensure that sugar prices never fall below a certain level; otherwise, the sugar growers get paid directly. A policy that, combined with corn subsidies, has led to a surge in the use of corn syrup as a cheaper alternative.

America also heavily restricts importing sugar to ensure that the few wealthy American sugar companies can maintain their control over the markets, and therefore keep their wealth that is taken from the average American. A far cry from the free market system that so many capitalists insist is essential for our nation.

What you notice is lacking from that list of subsidized foods is the wide variety of healthy fruits and vegetables that can be grown here in America. 

• That is why there are food deserts. 

• That is why so many Americans are unhealthy. 

• That is why so many family-run farms are struggling. 

• And that is why our nation is exploring produce prescriptions.

Some lawmakers are working to change this dynamic in multiple ways. One of those politicians is Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. Booker has long pointed out how less than 2% of our food subsidies go towards healthy food. He is actively working on a bill to change US subsidies to specifically put a significantly larger portion of that money towards healthy foods. 

Booker has voiced his support for food as medicine, a term that describes the produce prescription approach to providing healthy food to those in need.

He has also introduced bills to improve multiple aspects of the food chain, including requiring more humane treatment of animals and preventing pesticides that are proven to be dangerous to humans from being used in farming.

The issue preventing this positive change is corporate influence in politics. Booker has introduced these bills in the past, and they’ve been stonewalled by partisan gridlock. Yet these are issues that all Americans from both sides of the aisle should care about.

• Don’t we all want access to healthier, safer food? 

• Wouldn’t we all like to have access to healthy food at a lower cost? 

• Does anyone want to suffer expensive and life-threatening diseases so that corporations can get rich from your tax dollars?

None of this is about restricting your choice of what to eat. Instead, it is about ensuring your tax dollars work for you by creating affordable, healthy options, rather than funneling money to big corporations that harm Americans.

The only way these changes will gain enough traction is if voters raise their voice and demand action. Our voices and our donations can win out over corporate lobbyists and entrenched politicians who have long forgotten about their constituents' well-being.

Vote for a healthy and safe food chain that benefits all Americans, farmers, and consumers alike.