Advances in Food-As-Medicine Interventions and Their Impact on Future Food Production, Processing, and Supply Chains

Food-as-medicine (FAM) is an emerging trend among medical doctors, health insurers, startups, and governmental public-health and nongovernmental organizations. FAM implies using food as a part of an individual’s health plan to prevent or help treat acute and chronic health conditions and diseases. We highlight trends and hurdles in the FAM intervention pyramid. Our viewpoint is to indicate how interventions might change the future demand for specific food groups, their transport in supply chains, and the technologies used to process them. On the basis of national guidelines, dietary interventions can help to prevent and treat many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. FAM R&D and services offer more individualized treatments. This is challenging given the interindividual variability and complexity of the body’s response to food and related factors, such as dietary habits, genetics, lifestyle, and biosphere. Quantifying health improvements is essential to prove the added value of more individualized FAM interventions compared with adopting a general healthy diet. It is unclear which level of individualization of interventions produces the largest health benefits at the lowest costs for the patient, healthcare system, and climate. FAM interventions can support and complement conventional medical treatment. They will require a shift to producing more health-promoting foods, including whole foods, minimally processed foods, and selected processed foods. The food processing industry and supply chains must adapt to these new scenarios. Auxiliary technologies and methods are enablers, including delivery services, wearable technology, health-monitoring apps, and data-driven consumer behavior analysis.