On October 14, Fresh Advantage’s Managing Director Marydale DeBor, partner Chef Anne Gallagher, and Fresh Advantage affiliate nutritionist Francine Blinten enjoyed “Tea” (a longstanding Yale tradition) with the next crop of eager healthy-food champions on campus at Pierson College. This Fresh Advantage trio was delighted to be the first special guests in the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s 2015–16 speaker series “Women of Food.” The afternoon’s theme was “Women Addressing Food in Healthcare.”
How they can help fix our health and food systems
At the National Farmers Union convention this spring, a roomful of farmers listened attentively to Marydale DeBor, who was pitching a new idea.
“I am looking for you to be doctors to the world,” she said. A board member of the New England Farmers Union and delegate to the convention, DeBor has a vision for food’s role in health care: “Food is Primary Care.” It’s the tagline for her consulting company, Fresh Advantage (www.freshadvantage.com), which works with institutions nationwide to create health-driven and mission-aligned food service operations.
Indeed, good nutrition can help address many of our nation’s health challenges. A root cause of our poor health is a food system gone wrong: ubiquitous processed food laden with excess salt, sugar and fat, along with inadequate access to healthy food for many. Poor diet contributes to public health problems of obesity and related chronic diseases – diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
As they strive to prove they are benefiting communities under the Affordable Care Act, nonprofit hospitals may become the latest battleground between fast-food purveyors and advocates of healthy—and preferably locally produced—cuisine.
“I am looking for opportunities for you to be the doctors to the world,” said Marydale DeBor, a former Connecticut hospital executive, at the convention for the National Farmers Union last month in Springfield, Mass.
Hospitals have long been a culinary joke, serving unappetizing food of questionable nutritional value to patients while selling fast food that is even more questionable in their cafeterias. Medical-school critics have chastised physicians for prescribing to patients costly drugs to deal with the effects of diseases that arise from bad diets and lack of exercise rather than feeding them healthy food and teaching them to eat better when they leave the hospital.
Have you seen our new website? Check it out and read our latest article. freshadvantage.com/what-we-do-discover-how-fresh-advantage-promotes-better-eating-and-recovery/
What We Do: Discover how Fresh Advantage promotes better eating and recovery. – Fresh Advantage®
freshadvantage.com
Want to learn more about the type of work Fresh Advantage does? Read this article to get a peek into a plan that was put together for addressing food insecurity at an urban Community Mental Health Center.
Am very proud of the work that Alana Davidson, who worked with me as summer intern three years ago, is doing at UNH re food insecurity on campus. www.unionleader.com/education/Rent-tuition-come-before-food-for-some-UNH-students-12282016
Even before taking office, the Vice President elect is taking action to curtail the programs that help people, mostly low income and people of color.
South Dakota governor rejects Medicaid expansion
Modern Healthcare21 Nov 2016—Virgil Dickson
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard chose to abandon plans to
seek Medicaid expansion after meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Daugaard, a Republican who had been supportive of expanding Medicaid eligibility in his state, last week said he would not recommend expansion to the state’s Legislature this year after hearing the incoming administration’s plans for repealing or reforming the ACA.
Brian Blase, senior research fellow at the conservative Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia, believes Daugaard was told that consistent with campaign promises, Congress will repeal the federal match for the expansion population.
The Affordable Care Act provides 100% financing for Medicaid expansion. The rate would fall to 90% by 2020 and beyond. But the GOP now controls both houses of Congress, and while President-elect Donald Trump has stepped back from a full repeal of the ACA, Republican congressional leaders continue to talk about major changes to the ACA.