Ms. Alyson Rosenthal Discusses Food As Medicine

In the recent past, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition have (re)gained policymakers’ interest largely due to the COVID pandemic and accelerating climate breakdown – that has among other things reduced the growth of global agricultural production by 30-35%. As a result, last year 2.8 billion of the world’s population could not afford a healthy diet. In the US, over 40 million Americans receive food assistance via the federal Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP) in large part because grocery prices have increased by over 20% since 2021. Poor diet has long been known to be responsible for innumerable causes of disability and death. For example, the number of states with an obesity rate at or above 35% doubled over the past five years to 19. One in 10 Americans have diabetes and one in three will be diagnosed with cancer, both of which are related to poor diet. Diet-related diseases also help explain high US COVID morbidity and mortality rates.

Information concerning West Side Campaign Against Hunger’s efforts is at: https://www.wscah.org/.

Recently published research regarding the association between food security, health and dietary factors discussed during this interview is at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10857290/.

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