BERLIN, Vt. — What if, instead of meds, doctors prescribed peas and carrots?
That's the idea behind a growing partnership between the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps and two Vermont hospitals. Volunteers, doctors and nurses are giving hefty doses of fresh, local vegetables to patients from Fletcher Allen Health Care and Central Vermont Medical Center.
Part community-supported agriculture, part doctor's orders, the program is free for patients who have been recommended by their physicians.
"Good nutrition is the cheapest health care insurance you can ever buy," said Diane Imrie, the director of nutrition services at Fletcher Allen. "If we want to talk about having a 'well' community, they have to be well fed."
Vermont is not alone in treating food as medicine. Hospitals and health insurers in other parts of the country have already started to experiment with nutrition-based healing. Since 2005, a handful of health insurance companies in Wisconsin have offered rebates for customers who sign up for CSAs - it's a way to incentivize healthy eating habits. Another venture is FVRx - a fruit and vegetable "prescription" program that started in Connecticut and gives patients vouchers to purchase healthy food.
Such programs are starting to produce results. FVRx tracked body-mass index decreases in 41 percent of children who participated.
VYCC initially started its farm-share program with Central Vermont Medical Center in 2012. Last year, the program expanded to Chittenden County through a pilot project with Colchester Family Practice. This year, the VYCC farm program is twice as big as it was to start: Ten student-farmers - ranging in age from 15 to 21, who are paid to work on the VYCC farm in Richmond - are planting and harvesting eight acres of vegetables, enough food for 300 families.
The rationale?
"It's really easy to tell people to eat all this healthy food,"