Food and Health - An Introduction

This episode gives a short introduction to our topic for Season Three. If you want more background information on food access in general here are some good starting places:

Feeding America - includes Hunger and Health exploring health connections and the Map the Gap site for statisticsFood Research and Action Center USDA Food Security - includes definitions of commonly used terms like "food insecurity"Food is Medicine Coalition - this is for a very specific area of food work, but it's useful to know as an example of food prescribed to treat particular diseasesNFACT - A UVM led project that uses survey data to capture food insecurity and concerns during COVID-19 response, including stay at home orders

And a few other items of interest referenced in the episode:

If We All Ate Enough Fruit and Vegetables, There'd Be Big Shortages - NPR, 2019The Great Nutrient Collapse - Politico, 2017Behind Belle Gibson's Cancer Con - The Guardian, 2017 - I keep reading these stories because what I really want to know is, are the recipes any good? They didn't cure cancer, but how did they taste? It's not easy to write a cookbook you know. Columbia and the Problem of Dr. Oz - The New Yorker, 2015

One topic we won't cover, but one where Vermont is particularly awesome, is food literally in health care - what food we serve at our hospitals. There's a whole movement around that (Healthy Food in Health Care) and a Vermont network. "Healthy" food in this context includes environmental health along with nutrition. It's a great set of initiatives, but beyond the scope of this series, so we're mentioning it now and for more details you'll have to follow the links above to learn more. 

This season of the Policy in Plainer English podcast is made possible through a grant from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy to plan for a rural health network that increases communication around the intersection of food and health care in Vermont.