What Happens When Doctors Start Prescribing Food Instead of Pills?

One day, the Rockefeller Foundation hopes you can leave a doctor’s office with a new kind of prescription. Not for another pill, but for a bushel of apples, a head of lettuce, some organic meat, and maybe a piece of dark chocolate, all tailored to your specific health needs. While it may sound like a wellness fantasy, this is happening in small pockets across the U.S., where Food Is Medicine initiatives are taking shape. And it turns out these initiatives are more than just delicious — they could have the power to seriously boost the American economy.

In early March, the foundation released a new report, From Farm to FIM: The Economic Impact of Local Food is Medicine, which analyzed what would happen if Food Is Medicine (FIM) programs—offering produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals to people with diet-related conditions—were expanded to reach the 43 million Americans who need them most. And in short, it would do a world of good.

According to the report, expanding these programs to all those people would generate $45 billion in state economic activity, create 316,000 jobs nationwide, and bring in more than $5.6 billion for small and mid-sized farms.