Pilot Hospital Program will Provide Plant-Based Meals as Medicine to Chronically Ill Patients!

A new pilot program promoting a plant-based diet just rolled out at the NYC Health Hospitals/Bellevue this month! It will provide 100 patients with a plan to change their eating habits to a plant-based diet to help with chronic diseases. Patients in the Plant-Based Lifestyle Medicine Program will meet with a nutritionist to go over a plan for their new plant-based diet. Edible Brooklyn reports that the city will give them “Health Bucks”, to go to farmers markets to buy fruits and vegetables, as well as receiving discounts at grocery stores through the healthy savings program. They will have to see a team member once a week for six months. This program is the first of it’s kind in NYC and hopefully will be the beginning of a trend towards utilizing Food As Medicine! To read more about the program click here.

This is just the beginning, as numerous hospitals on Long Island are also starting to incorporate food and nutrition as part of the patient care plan. This is a huge step in the right direction for healthcare to acknowledge the link between the need for education on nutrition so that patients can have a healthy diet and hopefully be illness-free. 

The New York Times reports: 

“While the pleasures of a good meal are gratifying, the real reason hospitals should offer better food is that nutrition is a pillar of good health, says Dr. David Eisenberg of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Eisenberg says the jury is no longer out on the benefits of eating a more plant-based diet with less refined foods, sugar and red meat. A study published last year in JAMA estimated that nearly half of the deaths from heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes are caused by poor diet.” 

California also just passed a bill requiring jails and hospitals to provide inmates and hospital patients the option of having plant-based meals. Requiring plant-based meals be provided allows people to make healthy decisions. These are all hopeful steps! 

Another promising event to check out is the upcoming, Long Island Food Conference on November 3rd! The conference is focused around the theme, Food As A Solution, and will have a panel dedicated to “Food as Health”. The panel will feature Doctor Robert Graham of FreshMedNY, and The Natural Nurse, Ellen Kamhi. If you are looking to learn more about the food world please save the date! 

Hurricane Florence Flooding Contaminates Surrounding Areas With Hog Waste

Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg /Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence last week, North Carolina was bombarded with record high flooding throughout the state. Something that no one thought was possible, were the health risks the flooding could cause. This is due to the hog farms that had “lagoons” of waste on their properties which overflowed due to the flooding. This means that the manure containing bacteria from the animals has now been spread throughout the surrounding areas and could affect the water supply of many residents. Along with hog and chicken waste, there has also been a breach in coal ash that could be very toxic if it spreads to water supplies in the area. 

NPR reported last week that there has been several breaches to the hog waste lagoons, and several million chickens were killed due to the post Hurricane river flooding in the Coastal Carolina area. 

The New Yorker’s most recent article on the issue states that more than four thousand of those lagoons, with waste from more than 8 million hogs, raised in confined houses on flood-prone land, had been compromised. This means that

pathogens, bacteria and gases are going into the water ways of the area causing algae blooms, and dangerous pollutants to run into the water ways. 

The New Yorker reports: “After conferring with Soren Rundquist, the director of geospatial analysis at an advocacy organization called Environmental Working Group, it was determined that these lagoons unleashed all of their contents, an estimated 7.3 million gallons of waste—including decades-old sludge that Kemp described as “the worst constituents of hog waste concentrated”—into tributaries of the South River and the Northeast Cape Fear River. It was the biggest single-day hog-waste lagoon breach since the one at Oceanview, in 1995,…”

Photo Credit: Quartz & Youtube

This horrible situation highlights a system that has had problems for decades, and has seen no change. The factory farming of animals for meat production creates disgusting, and unsafe conditions for people living in the surrounding areas. Not to mention the people all over the country who are eating this meat! Will this be the turning point to wake people up on the horrors of factory meat farming? For the sake of the people living in North Carolina with hog waste infiltrating their homes and properties I hope so! 

Congress is Running Out of Time to Pass a New Farm Bill

The old Farm Bill is set to expire on September 30th, and Congress still hasn’t come to a resolution to pass a new one. If there is no resolution and a new Farm Bill is not passed by the deadline, many American’s lives will be directly affected. The current hold up is said to be due to the difference in opinion on the work requirements needed in order to qualify for SNAP Benefits, a federal food-aid program.

Though the SNAP program and farm subsidy programs wouldn’t lapse for some months, many other programs would be left in limbo. Politico and The American Ag Network outlines them, including funding for USDA programs, international relations programs, local and regional food systems programs, and any foreign aid programs. 

If a bill isn’t past, leaders have indicated we have until December to pass a new bill before old law goes into affect. Why are our lawmakers dragging their feet on a bill that will effect so many!