#271 Why Prescribing Food could fix the Healthcare crisis with Jonathan Pauling

Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption sounds so trivial, but I honestly believe that concerted efforts to increase this key measure of our diet quality would culminate in success. And by success I mean successfully improving people's health, but also increasing the wealth of our communities and alleviating our nation's food supply insecurity. To explore this concept further with me is Jonathan Pauling, CEO of Alexandra Rose, one of my favourite charities and one that Doctor’s Kitchen supports. 10 years ago Jonathan helped develop its new mission - to improve access to healthy and affordable food for all. They built the ‘Rose Vouchers’ for Fruit & Veg Project to pioneer the use of financial incentives to help families on low incomes avoid food insecurity, nutrition insecurity and food related ill-health. From small pilots in London supporting 45 families, this work has now spread around the UK supporting 3,500 families every week. The scheme works by giving families literal cash in the form of rose vouchers that can be used at local food markets in exchange for fresh produce. It’s increased fruit and vegetable consumption by a staggering amount as we’ll get into during the podcast, and I was genuinely shocked at some of the impressive numbers that Jonathan shared with me. Today we explore the economic and health incentives for why this scheme should be adopted across every local authority and NHS commissioners to not only help the millions of people living in financial hardship in the UK, but also to alleviate the burden on our health system. 🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here 📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free* 🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website *The Doctor's Kitchen App gives you access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too. Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week. 🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan 📷 Follow on Instagram 🐦 Tweet me We would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think, and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.