Food as Medicine Summit

The May ‘21 Food as Medicine Summit convened leaders from the Healthcare, Retail, CPG, Nonprofit, Academia, and Startup communities to discuss the growing evidence behind food’s role in improving health.  Nutrition-led food solutions will drive tremendous disruption across our economy for the better. It’s exciting to see the start of recognizable shifts in the market. Below I summarize my three key takeaways and predictions.

1. Medically Tailored Meals are Here to Stay

Medically Tailored Meals (MTMs) have been a catalyst to align cross-functional stakeholders around the Food is Medicine movement. MTMs are designed to serve the most sick patients that require the most expensive healthcare. MTM companies and nonprofits design meals based on a patient’s condition, then prepare and deliver them. As context, in the United States, the sickest 5% of the population captures 50% of our total healthcare spend.  

There is an active discussion and excitement for MTMs thanks to the momentum of a few Nonprofit and Healthcare organizations that invested in designing, producing, delivering, and measuring the impact of Medically Tailored Meals.  I have been following the work and impact of Community Servings for a few years. Their pilot studies of MTMs in Massachusetts realized total healthcare cost savings of 16% by making it easy and seamless for patients to eat well during their treatment. The limited scale and differences in MTM program design, production, delivery and measurement fuels the current debate about the efficacy of MTMs.  However, some players are not waiting for perfect efficacy data. They are investing in MTM programs now.

• Feb 2020 - Insurance Program: Humana and Mom’s Meals partnership offered some Medicare Advantage plans that included home-delivered, ready-to-eat meals covered as part of their Humana Well Dine® post-discharge and chronic conditions meal benefits

• May 2020 - Government: A bill with bipartisan support was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives to assess the effects of providing qualified individuals medically tailored home-delivered meals 

• April 2021 - Nonprofit: The Food is Medicine Coalition, an association of nonprofit medically tailored food and nutrition service providers, sent a letter of policy recommendations to new Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra

I will continue to track this space as we learn more from these programs. I also believe we need MTM-spirited solutions that extend to general population. Everytable is a promising example of a quick service restaurant prioritizing accessible nutrition.

2. Accessible, Personalized Nutrition Insights are for Everyone

12% of the US population is metabolically healthy. This means only 12% of the US population have ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, waist circumference, without using medications. These factors directly relate to a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

The summit included presentations of three different consumer-facing metabolic testing companies. For roughly $200 and a combination of blood, saliva, and stool samples, these companies will measure your microbiome health, share a report with you, and make recommendations on the foods a person should eat to improve metabolic health. My sense is that the nutrition data behind these products make their recommendations directionally correct but not yet precise.

Quick Aside: Two of these microbiome testing companies specifically called out the Keto diet as unhealthy for the microbiome. Customers that follow the Keto diet consistently expressed cellular stress and metabolic aging beyond a customer’s physical age. The news about the Keto diet’s impact on our microbiome is not surprising, but general confusion about what makes food healthy was an overarching concern of the summit. 

Presenters and panelists consistently reinforced overlapping themes in response to clarifying what foods are healthy. Recurring messages that stood out to me were:

• Food is not just a lever, it’s personal, it’s culture, it's celebratory

• Increasing “nutrition literacy” is critical

• Nutrition must be easy for consumers to access and delicious

A question that the representative from one of the global CPG organizations raised that I look forward to answering is, “What does affordable nutrition mean?”

3. Consumer Education and Demand for Nutrition Transparency Defines the Path Ahead

I predict we will see an evolution away from a calorie-based food system to one that prioritizes nutrient density. Companies that resist transparency will lose market share. 

Our current nutrition labels lack real insight about nutrient density, additives, or production choices that impact the food’s healthiness. Just like consumers demanded removal of high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats in the early 2000s, consumers today are self-educating about what “eating clean” means for themselves and their families. As they build an understanding of the impact of additives and food processing choices on their health and performance, their food preferences and food purchases shift.  As a result of these shifts, food companies will respond with more information about the nutrients or healthfulness of their food. I predict the amount and variety of food labeling will increase over the next two years.

As nutrition is recognized as a lever influencing health outcomes and healthcare costs, differences in food access will need to be addressed. We will see terms like “nutrition security” and “food equity” rise in our social consciousness as we reckon with the lack of uniform access to a nutritious diet. Beyond the human health impact of food, consumers will also continue to have interest in seeing fair labor conditions along the supply chain as well as environmental sustainability insights about production. 

What I Would Have Liked to See in the Summit

One area of critical feedback for the summit is a lack of integration of panelists across industry segments.  I came into this event largely understanding what the pioneer players driving the Food is Medicine movement are doing in the market to move it forward. Made up of Nonprofits, Startups, and select Healthcare organizations, these pioneers are demonstrating the bottom line impact of deploying nutrition to improve health outcomes. I had hoped to hear the leaders within the Retail and CPG industries engage the leaders of these pioneering organizations directly. Instead, sessions separated out the panelists. Participants like me were left to connect the dots, piecing the talking points of stakeholders across conversations. Perhaps the conference or individual participants felt it was too early to pair industry segments within the presentations. I think we are ready. Retail and CPG leaders can offer great perspective and capability as the conversation continues.

David Waters, CEO of Community Servings, closed his panel discussion with a plea to “big food” to help lobby for systemic change. He is focused in part on changing health insurance reimbursement policies to support scaled MTM adoption.  As part of this policy change, this movement is bringing up true cost accounting of food consumption.  CPG, Retail, and Chemical companies are a critical part of this discussion as we all work toward the future. Let’s start having that integrated debate.