Reflections on a year of food as medicine
The first 12 months (!!) and beyond.
This month marks an entire year since I started this essay series. Last February, I was newly enrolled at NYU, a bit unsure of my direction but nevertheless confident that food as medicine was a topic I wanted to learn more about. Despite some major imposter syndrome, I made a commitment to write at least one post a month and I’m so glad I stuck to it. Because now, there’s this wonderful community of readers here, both old and new, who continue to inspire me to grow and share. Thank you for being here; it means a lot.
In the last year of writing and thinking about food as medicine, I’ve noticed that the space is beginning to feel a lot more crowded these days. I can’t tell if it’s my own community expanding, my algorithms getting sharper, or if food as medicine itself is growing as a field; I have a suspicion it’s a combination of all three. But I’m excited to see more folks are recognizing the connection between food and health, more programs and interventions are getting resourced, and that the fields where I’ve chosen to build my career are starting to talk to one another. I’m also noticing some new themes and directions that the field of food as medicine needs to consider. These are the top three topics I expect to discuss a lot more in 2024.
1. Climate must be part of the conversation.
We’ve long recognized the overlap between our food system and climate change, but fixing the challenges plaguing both has become more urgent in recent years. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food found that our current food system accounts for over 15% of fossil fuel production, and last year’s COP28 summit focused specifically on the role food production plays in climate change. 2024 has kicked off with multiple commitments both globally and locally to address food loss and waste, as well as to reform the agricultural space. In the U.S., we expect that the Farm Bill will also be influenced significantly by the need to address climate change too.
The aftereffects of major weather events reverberate outward, causing disruptions to supply chains, destroying crops, and limiting the immediate and long-term availability of food, especially fresh food, for communities impacted. Additional studies have found that climate change directly impacts food accessibility, safety, and prices. For these reasons and more, food and climate can’t operate in silos if their efforts are to be successful, and food as medicine has an important role to play.
Initiatives focused on nutritious food access will need to consider shipping and storing infrastructure that may be disrupted by climate disaster, while more individually targeted interventions should begin to track the amount of packaging and plastics used. Relatedly, food as medicine advocates need to understand the importance of both collaborating with and appealing to climate funders and organizations if they are to have the greatest, most holistic impact.
This is why my colleague Eva and I are launching a Climate Philanthropy Class specifically for folks who work in the food and public health spaces. It’s a small step, but I’m excited at the prospect of helping folks understand how to ensure their approaches to food justice dovetail with climate work, with the goal of potentially expanding their impact and creating more sustainable solutions overall. You can click the button below to learn more and evaluate if this might be a fit for you.
2. Money is medicine just as much as food.
Edgar Villaneuva, an activist, philanthropy expert, and author of Decolonizing Wealth, has written extensively about the idea that money can be medicine. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe, Villanueva combines his indigenous heritage with modern philanthropic strategy to think about how money may be used as a tool to restore balance and justice, particularly in the contexts of racial and social justice. His framing applies directly to the food as medicine space as well.
So many of the challenges food as medicine is intended to address – food insecurity, nutritious food access, produce access, etc. – are also financial challenges. Food as medicine is at an exciting place where lots of resources are moving towards it, and funders are excited at the prospect of investing in impactful programs. But we also need to start having some frank conversations about where exactly these resources are going and they’re being invested into.
For example, the recent White House announcement that they are launching partnerships with Instacart, the Rockefeller Foundation and Feeding America is an exciting next step and demonstrates publicly the importance of this kind of work. But I want to make sure we’re still considering and driving resources equitably to so many of the smaller community-based organizations doing critical, on the groundwork that addresses larger systemic issues of inequality and access, and not get complacent in funding the shiny exciting individually focused interventions.
3. Education is the next frontier
As food as medicine grows, the field will likely start to coalesce around centralized ideas, definitions, and trusted sources that will be used to continue expanding the field and educating others. Public health schools and medical schools are already starting to incorporate more nutrition and culinary education into their curricula. Tufts’ new Food is Medicine Institute, the Center for Food as Medicine, and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine are all offering introductory courses and supporting research in the field, and I expect these offerings will grow exponentially.
I’m curious about who gets to own these narratives, and who gets the privilege and responsibility of educating this next generation. I’m also interested in what folks are being taught. While I loved my public health program and learned so much from my professors at Columbia, I also heard plenty of critique of how our learning environment, and course materials perpetuated this ivory tower mentality. I’m noticing this same tension start to emerge with food as medicine, especially when most of the courses I see capitalizing on this space are focusing on dietary patterns and individual behavior change. And I’m worried that this means the field will inevitably slide into the idea that there is a set “right” way to practice food as medicine that may marginalize multiple perspectives, histories, and teachings from different fields and cultures.
In addition to the Climate Philanthropy Class, I’m also designing a class on food as medicine for my NYU capstone this year. My goal is to focus on both the growing body of food as medicine research, but also to weave in the role of public policy, public health, and cultural, historical, and anthropological perspectives. I’ve yet to see a course addressing food as medicine in this way, and I hope to be one of the first to do so.
After a year of Food As/Is, I’m energized by these projects and hopeful for the future of the field. I think I can safely say that this project has been so much more rewarding than I thought possible, and I plan to continue it as long as I possibly can.
In the meantime, I welcome your feedback and thoughts on ideas for future posts, research and readings to include in my upcoming courses, and more.
Reading
bell hooks’ Eating the Other, a fabulous essay for my Food and Culture class about cultural taboos, food, eating, and most of all, consumption. It’s my first time reading this work and I am continuously amazed at hooks’ foresight and beautiful prose. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who regularly thinks about food.
Cooking
Not much these days thanks to a busy month and a bit of seasonal depression. But on the first sunny day in what felt like months, I made myself a pretty delicious breakfast of toasted sourdough bread, scrambled eggs, avocado, and Korean pear. I love how everything looked in the morning light, and it tasted fabulous.
I love reading your work, Nora!
Congratulations on one year of Food As/Is, Nora!