If food is medicine, how about a blueberry tip? NS researchers hope this is the future

Jim Grove loves blueberries – and that’s a good thingGiven that for the next year, he is required to eat one cup every day.

“I think I’ve gained 35 pounds now from eating blueberries. That’s what I’ve been eating all along,” he said before making another smoothie at his home in Halifax.

Grove, 67, has just come from an appointment, during which he underwent a series of physical tests and answered a series of questions such as whether he could do his own banking, count backwards in multiples of six and list as many animals as possible in one minute.

At the end of it all, a research coordinator handed Grove a large box of frozen Nova Scotia wild blueberries.

“Here are your blueberries for the next two weeks,” she said.

Grove is a participant in a new study conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine, which is looking at whether giving people one blueberry to eat every day, 30 grams of protein powder and a personalized exercise routine three times a week would improve frailty and heart health in older people. If that happens, researchers hope the results will strengthen the argument for doctors prescribing blueberries.

It’s part of a larger trend taking hold in Canada: meal scheduling. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Doctors identify patients who are experiencing food insecurity and at risk for diet-related chronic diseases, and write them prescriptions for fresh food. This gives them access to subsidized or free healthy food.

“When we think about prescribing, we usually think about someone being sick and needing to be prescribed a medication,” said Leah Cahill, a registered dietitian and principal investigator of the study, which she named. strong.

“The idea of ​​setting lifestyles to keep people from getting sick, that’s where we have our hearts set.”

Cahill and his team are still looking for more people to join their clinical trial, which will include a total of 240 people ages 65 and older. 120 of them will be in the treatment group, who will eat antioxidant-rich blueberries every day, while the other 120 will be in the control group, who will follow their normal diet. Everyone must undergo an evaluation every three months for a year, and then another evaluation after a year.

As part of the philanthropic organization’s commitment to funding “transformational medical research” at universities and medical schools in Canada, the team received a $1 million grant from the Nova Scotia-based River Phillip Foundation.

Cahill, who is also an associate professor of medicine at Dalhousie, says that although most people Know that eating fruits and exercising is good for them, but it is not necessary that they do it. He hopes that providing food and ritualized, supervised workouts will reduce the “mental load” of tackling it alone.

She says frailty and heart health are linked – heart disease is a significant source of death and disability in Canada and frailty puts people at risk.

“We wanted to keep (people) strong for a long time.”

Food prescriptions are increasing rapidly

As Canadians grapple with the affordability crisis, researchers say interest in prescribing meals is growing rapidly.

A Comment Article of June 2024 The “limitations and opportunities” of this practice have been critically evaluated in the Canadian peer-reviewed scientific journal Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention.

It was found that Fdetermine better results and Vegetable intake, and “shows promise” for helping health care providers together address food insecurity and chronic disease management.

But the article finds that more research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-efficiency compared to other health care, public health and social welfare programs.

Its lead author, Matthew Little, an associate professor at the University of Victoria, says scheduling meals is often a matter of connecting people to services that already exist in their communities, but they may not be able to access – or choose not to.

Prescriptions provide the added incentive of “doctor’s orders,” he said.

But he cautions that this could be seen as paternalistic, and questions whether “setting aside the cash” would be more respectful.

Additionally, he says more research is needed into whether there may be people in need who may be disadvantaged by not having a family doctor.

“Will this actually exacerbate some of the health disparities that exist in the Canadian context?” he said in an interview.

Food prescribing in Canada occurs only in small areas, usually at the local level – largely in Alberta and Ontario. Little says most of the research in this area comes from the United States, primarily because the 2018 Farm Bill established dedicated funding for produce prescription programs.

Guelph doctors are already prescribing food like medicine

Physicians at the Community Health Center in Guelph, Ontario are already prescribing fresh food like medicine, and have at some level since 2019. People can redeem their prescriptions at the center’s online grocery store.

Chief executive officer Melissa Kwiatkowski says severe food insecurity has nearly halved among the center’s 260 clients. Clinical markers associated with diabetes and heart disease also improved, she says.

But she says the program is mostly funded through grants, which is not sustainable. He has submitted a pre-budget proposal asking the Ontario government to invest $14 million over three years to launch a provincial food prescription program.

“Ultimately my hope is that fresh food prescribing is part of primary care, part of standard practice,” he said.

He said that if successful, “rigorous research” on large-scale models will remain important.

Little agrees and says more studies in Canada, such as the one at Dalhousie, are “greatly needed.”

STRONG is a rolling study, meaning that not all participants start at the same time. The program will be completed after 240 participants have been involved for one year.

Grove, Joe LSuffers from type 2 diabetes and arthritis, admits it was hard to get used to the new diet First. But now, working out three times a week and eating blueberries every day is a pleasant routine.

He says that when he turned 60, his body started aching and “everything felt off,” but after three months on the program, he’s already seeing changes in himself.

“I just think if I improve, hopefully it will help me when I get older.”