Food Is Medicine Only Works If People Eat the Food
The launch of the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute and Kaiser Permanente implementation toolkit marks an important milestone for a movement that is rapidly reshaping healthcare. For those less familiar with the term, Food Is Medicine (FIM) refers to a growing category of evidence-based interventions that use nutrition as part of the treatment plan for chronic disease and other health conditions. These programs can include medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, produce prescriptions, nutrition counseling, and other food-based supports designed to improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare utilization, and lower costs.
The evidence supporting Food Is Medicine continues to grow. What the field has needed is a practical roadmap for turning promising research into sustainable, scalable programs. The new toolkit delivers exactly that: six comprehensive sections, dozens of frameworks, and clear guidance for designing, operationalizing, and evaluating Food Is Medicine initiatives.
As a graduate of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, I’m especially encouraged to see this resource come to life. The clinical evidence is apparent. The implementation roadmap is here. The momentum is real. But every Food Is Medicine intervention ultimately succeeds or fails in a far more ordinary place: the moment a patient or resident picks up a fork.
The toolkit captures the conditions for that moment remarkably well, and they align closely with what we see in practice every day. As Director of Nutrition, Health & Wellbeing at Culinour, I work alongside healthcare organizations that are increasingly looking to nutrition as a tool for improving patient outcomes, supporting recovery, and enhancing the overall care experience. Food Is Medicine has enormous potential to improve outcomes, reduce utilization, and enhance quality of life. But realizing that potential requires more than a referral. It requires operational excellence, culinary expertise, and a deep understanding of how people actually engage with food.
That’s why one idea kept resurfacing as I read the toolkit: Food Is Medicine works when the food is worth eating.
Here’s where our operating experience lines up with the toolkit:
Quality is the lever operators can move most. Section 2 names access, dose, duration, quality, and delivery mode as the five design considerations. All five matter. The one that most directly shapes adherence is quality. The food has to be appealing and enjoyable enough that patients actually want to eat it. Nutrient density is the floor; craveability is the ceiling.
Cultural preference is a clinical variable. One of the most important framings in the toolkit is the explicit link between cultural and religious food preferences and intervention effectiveness. Pair that with values-based procurement and local sourcing, and you get food that patients and residents recognize as theirs.
Duration is the difference between a pilot and an outcome. The toolkit recommends three months as the minimum to see clinically meaningful HbA1c change, with six-plus months tied to greater impact on utilization and cost. Any culinary partner supporting a FIM program has to be designed for the long arc: consistency, variety, and freshness sustained over months and years.
Delivery mode shapes who actually receives the food. A striking toolkit data point: food hubs report participation rates approaching 100% with home delivery, compared to as low as 65% when patients have to travel to a pick-up site. The principle translates everywhere – the more the food meets people in the rhythm of their day, the more the intervention works.
Step therapy is the right mental model. The toolkit’s framing of escalating and de-escalating across the spectrum of interventions reframes FIM from a static benefit into a dynamic care pathway. Good operators build the culinary and clinical infrastructure to flex across the continuum, not lock into a single product. A resident’s needs in independent living look very different from their needs in skilled nursing, and the food has to evolve with them.
At Culinour, what excites us most about this moment is the opportunity to help healthcare organizations translate Food Is Medicine from concept into practice. The evidence is growing, implementation guidance is now available, and healthcare leaders increasingly recognize that nutrition is not ancillary to care – it is part of care.
Our team is ready to help bring those programs to life through chef-driven culinary strategies, operational expertise, and dining experiences that support both clinical goals and patient satisfaction. Because the success of Food Is Medicine isn’t measured by the referral that gets written. It’s measured by the meal that gets eaten.
— Camille Finn, MS, RD, LDN, Director of Nutrition, Health & Wellbeing, Phoenix3 Collective; Alum, Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy