Food Is Medicine Calls for a New Approach to Diet and Agriculture

It’s often said that food is a matter of individual preference, but the national food crisis is far bigger than asking people to make better choices at the grocery store, says Dariush Mozaffarian, a nutrition scientist and physician. In his new book, Food Is Medicine: Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System, he explores what it would look like to get healthier food into the mouths of all Americans.

The book, to be published by Henry Holt, will come out Oct. 20, 2026. Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and public health scientist at Tufts University in Boston, details how government policies, scientific breakthroughs and shifts in food production over the last few decades all played a role in forming the food environment we live in today. But he believes we can transform those systems to make healthful food more affordable and available.

Why Food is Healthcare Mozaffarian’s premise is not that we should use food instead of medicines or medical treatment. Food can be a supplement to traditional healthcare, in particular for people with illnesses. Current Food Is Medicine programs encompass medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, and produce prescriptions for individuals with certain health and social needs.

Mozaffarian also questions whether education alone can solve the challenges around nutrition. We can be educated about the benefits of a healthy diet but continue to find it hard to adhere when healthy foods are too costly or less convenient and easy to get. What we eat is also influenced by food manufacturing agriculture food retail, economics, and government policy and the strategy aims to address those factors as well.

Agriculture matters a lot in this argument. Rather than emphasizing mainly the production of increased amounts of food, Mozaffarian pushes for more incentives to produce foods that are optimal for human health. This might require farmers and the food industry to focus on nutrient-dense foods and make healthy foods more available in stores and neighborhoods.

Elsewhere the authors consider the issue of ultra processed foods. Recently, Mozaffarian has claimed that the processing of foods can matter beyond their content as researchers have started to explore the relationships between eating highly processed food and related illnesses. But Mozaffarian’s overall point is not that we need to avoid specific foods, but rather that we need to have a food system that supports healthy and minimally processed foods.

Equity is also an overarching theme. Nutrition and food access are not a matter of individual choice but determined by income, zip code, education, and other social determinants. Literature we reviewed on Food Is Medicine initiatives also acknowledges that nutrition is rooted in environmental economic social and cultural considerations instead of solely individual choices.

That vision of linking the dinner table to the doctor’s office, supermarket, and farm is what Mozaffarian eventually aims for, and he believes food can be part of treatment and prevention, as well as healthier communities and a more sustainable food economy.