STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK, we had a story the other day about how people are helped if doctors write a prescription for them to go outdoors. Now we have a follow-up. There's new evidence that a prescription for eating more fruits and vegetables can be a form of medicine. Several of these new studies come from the American Heart Association. And I have a prescription that you listen to this story by NPR's Allison Aubrey.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Imagine you walk into the produce section at your grocery store and you spot your favorite apples beautifully displayed in a way that makes you want to load up, but you hold back because you can't afford them. It's a familiar feeling for Latoya Perkinson. She lives in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.
LATOYA PERKINSON: Apples at one point were super expensive - $7 for a bag of apples. That's really expensive.
AUBREY: When she found out she and her family were eligible for a prescription produce program called Eat Well, giving her $80 a month to buy healthy fruits and vegetables, she no longer had to hold back in the produce aisle.
PERKINSON: I love having the Eat Well card. Fresh fruits and vegetables have natural things, like bananas help with my high blood pressure.
AUBREY: She was eligible for the produce prescription benefit as part of a research project to evaluate the effectiveness. And she says it's helped her a lot.
PERKINSON: My blood pressure has been going down if I eat well and don't let the stress take over.
AUBREY: There are lots of prescription produce and Food is Medicine programs popping up around the country. Eat Well is a program offered through a North Carolina nonprofit called Reinvestment Partners. Peter Skillern is CEO.
PETER SKILLERN: When people are asked what their biggest barrier to eating fruits and vegetables and eating healthy are, it's not how do I cook it, how do I eat it? It's cost. And this program reduced that barrier, and they changed their behavior. They got healthier.
AUBREY: Dr. Seth Berkowitz is a primary care doctor and the deputy scientific director of the American Heart Association's Health Care by Food initiative. He's also the author of a new study that found participants who receive a monthly produce prescription supplement saw reductions in their blood pressure of about 5.4 milligrams (ph) of mercury.
SETH BERKOWITZ: That may seem like a relatively small number, but we know at a population level that even a 1- or 2-millimeter-of-mercury blood pressure difference results in, you know, much lower rates of heart attacks, much lower rates of strokes.
AUBREY: With many treatment options for diet-related diseases, the consensus is that medicines and diet changes can both be helpful.
BERKOWITZ: When you give someone a blood pressure medicine, the medicine lowers their blood pressure but doesn't necessarily affect cholesterol or blood sugar or anything else. But healthy food affects lots of different systems, all in a positive way.
AUBREY: The prescription produce programs are only temporary. Latoya Perkinson got her fresh food supplement for six months, and now, with millions of others, she faces uncertainties over SNAP benefits, too.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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