Food for Thought —Include Controls in Policy Evaluations

Food insecurity and poor diet may play a role in worsening many chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, and congestive heart failure. Thus, providing medically tailored meals or food as medicine for patients could be an effective and safe intervention. The randomized clinical trial by Doyle et al randomly assigned 230 patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes and food insecurity to receive healthy groceries for 10 meals per week for the entire household for 6 months and compared them with 235 patients who were placed on a wait list and received the food intervention after 6 months. The hemoglobin A1c level improved in the group provided with food by approximately 1.5 percentage points after 6 months but improved by almost the same amount (1.3 percentage points) in the control group, resulting in a nonsignificant difference between the intervention and control groups.
Source: JAMA Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Source Type: research