The White House will convene an all-day meeting this week to consider new proposals to tackle food insecurity and diet-related chronic illnesses.
Rachel Martin, Host:
The White House is hosting a daylong conference on nutrition and hunger this week. NPR’s girlfriend Allison Aubrey joins us this morning for ideas on the table to combat that fact. Good morning Alison.
Alison Aubrey, signature: Good morning, Rachel.
Martin: During the pandemic, it became clear that people with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease had worse outcomes from COVID, right? Let’s talk about the role diet plays.
Aubrey: That’s right. Well, what we eat does play a role, Rachel. Researchers estimate, for example, that nearly 900 people in the United States die each day from diet-related heart disease. Millions more are at risk. Consider diabetes. About 1 in 3 adults in the United States has prediabetes. That number is about 100 million. It’s on people diagnosed with the condition. I spoke with Bruce Caldwell (ph). he is 59 years old. He lives in Rhode Island. He had developed type 2 diabetes. And he told me that 2 years ago his blood sugar got very high and he was taking multiple meds every day which made him feel sick.
BRUCE CALDWELL: Unfortunately, I really thought I had no choice but to take more medicine. I knew my next step, my PCP told me, would be to take daily insulin shots.
Aubrey: His doctor told him it was a combination of his genes, his weight, and actually his diet that led to this condition. rice field. This is because people with poorly controlled diabetes are at a much higher risk of many things, including kidney disease, nerve damage, eye damage, and a much higher risk of disability.
Martin: So what happened? Did he end up taking more medication?
Aubrey: What he did next really aligns with the key themes going into this week’s White House meeting. It is about integrating food and nutrition into medical practice, and thinking of food as medicine. Indeed, Bruce Caldwell did. He completely overhauled his diet. He cut out refined carbs, so white bread, pasta, and sugar ate more protein and healthier fats, and in this past year and a half, he’s changed his diet. I lost 55 pounds. Mike is down here and his diabetes has been reversed.
Martin: Wow.
Aubrey: His blood sugar is now in the normal, healthy range.
Caldwell: It feels great. I like to say that I didn’t know how bad I felt until I felt better.
Martin: Great. That’s great for him. So is he healthy enough not to need to take medicine?
Aubrey: I don’t need diabetes medicine anymore. Rachel got this started when his employer paid for a program called Virta offered through Virta Health. Designed to improve diabetes and combine diet and exercise. He told me, to my surprise, it worked really well.
Caldwell: Food can be medicine. Knowing what to eat and what not to eat, just eating will keep you feeling better. And I — I have more energy overall.
Aubrey: The immediate financial benefit is not having to pay for all these drugs every month. Long-term benefits of preventing all diabetes-related illnesses. Of course, this required a lot of effort on his part. Changing your eating habits is not easy. But it was transformative for him. A White House meeting this week discussed how best to make this kind of lifestyle-based program available to more people.
Martin: So what is the answer to that? I mean, is it reasonable to expect that many people like Bruce will be helped by what they get out of this conference?
AUBREY: As you know, I think there’s a growing momentum to address food-related chronic diseases. This will be a focus at Wednesday’s meeting, as there is mounting evidence that the very strategy Caldwell used could work for many people. This is Dariush Mozaffarian. He is a cardiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University. He says there are many studies showing that a combination of diet, exercise and weight loss can reverse or halt the progression of diabetes.
DARIUSH MOZAFARIAN: Diet is a direct and rapid remedy for a very complex disease. And with proper diet and weight loss, diabetes can go into remission.
AUBRY: Diabetes costs the U.S. health care system more than $240 billion a year to treat, so Dr. Mozaffarian and many other doctors and public health experts are expected to attend a White House conference on Wednesday. It is said that It’s time to invest more in prevention.
Martin: Can you talk a little bit more about prevention? Where are the efforts to prevent diseases like diabetes before they set in?
Aubrey: Well, this one will focus on Wednesday. The recommendation from many doctors and food security experts is this – one thing to do is make school meals universally free for all children across the country. In 2018, I think people think obesity is a bigger problem than malnutrition and food insecurity. is causing
Martin: Right.
AUBREY: These two issues overlap. they are linked. they are the same thing. People fill their bellies with cheap food. they gain weight. And that increases the risk of chronic diseases. We spoke with Chef Jose Andrés. He is famous for delivering food aid during hurricanes and Ukraine. The idea he’s bringing to the White House isn’t just to feed kids for free. Buy food from local farmers and hire local community workers to prepare healthy meals in schools. Build a local economy around these free meals by
Jose Andrés: That dollar to feed the kids is also pushing the infrastructure. Money goes to buy from rural farmers. The women and men they train earn a living. Suddenly $1 quadruples. We don’t have it and we should.
Aubrey: There are so many potential benefits to investing in healthy food for kids, he says. In the short term, absenteeism will decrease and children will be ready to learn. And in the long term, it is hoped that it will be able to do this—prevent food-related illnesses.
Martin: Alison Aubry from NPR. Aubrey – Aubrey – Alison, thank you. This was a really interesting conversation. We appreciate.
Aubrey: Thank you, Rachel.
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