“Studies show food is medicine” says WBUR, with Allison Aubrey quoting studies that suggest a benefit from prescribing healthy food to people at risk for metabolic and diet-related diseases.

Under the Food Is Medicine banner, hyperbole is easy to find. The people who have taken up this cause are selling hard. So the headlines that bombard us say things like “Doctors find fresh evidence that fruits and veggies can act as powerful medicine.”

But if you look at the studies propping up these headlines, you will find that such hype is not objectively true. Instead, what you will find is that if you provide and support ready access to healthy food in people who otherwise would have an unhealthy diet, their health improves.

This is a good thing. Giving people easy access to a healthy diet is a good idea and it indeed could serve to improve the health of the population. But it does not prove that food has the effect of powerful medicines. It proves that good food is important for good health.

Look at the Data

If in doubt, just take a look at the data.

More than one study on this subject prompted this week’s flurry of headlines and claims. They came from the Scientific Sessions meeting of the American Heart Association. But perhaps the strongest one was published in JAMA as well as presented at the meeting. So unlike the others, it has the benefit of peer review.

It is a study of the effects of delivering groceries to Black adults with elevated blood pressure in Boston neighborhoods with few grocery stores. The grocery deliveries were patterned after the DASH diet. The study was a randomized controlled trial where the control group got money to buy their own groceries – no deliveries of healthy food. They also did not get coaching on the value of the DASH diet.

Focus on the Intervention

So let’s be clear. This study proved that delivering healthy groceries in tandem with coaching on how to eat healthy can have a good effect on health. It reduced the blood pressure of these people on average by 2-3 mm Hg compared to the people who got money to buy their groceries of their own choosing.

But this is not the effect of a “powerful medicine.” Simple first line blood pressure medicines typically have an effect that is roughly four times greater, reducing blood pressure by 8-15 mm Hg. And that’s OK. Delivering healthy food to people who don’t have easy access to it is clearly a good idea. It is not, however, a substitute for medicine when people need it.

Food is not medicine. Food is life. Creating confusion about this distinction is not helpful because food is more important than medicine. Not a substitute for it.

Click here for the study of grocery deliveries in JAMA. For further perspective, click here, here, and here.

Food Is Medicine? Illustration created for ConscienHealth with Gemini image generation