Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.<\/p>\n
Medically Tailored Groceries Improve Health Outcomes<\/p>\n
A new peer-reviewed study<\/a> published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease looked at patients receiving free, plant-based medically tailored groceries from a food pantry connected to a community health center.<\/p>\n The groceries include fruits and vegetables, beans, whole grains, and foods like nut butter. Researchers found that people who received more of the grocery packages had improvements in diastolic blood pressure, weight, and BMI.<\/p>\n This was an observational study, not a randomized controlled trial, meaning the researchers can\u2019t say the groceries caused those improvements. And they didn\u2019t find significant overall improvements in systolic blood pressure or blood sugar. But the findings are encouraging they\u2019re another reason to keep studying what happens when nutritious food is more accessible.<\/p>\n Food is Medicine isn\u2019t a new idea. Indigenous communities and cultures around the world have understood the connection between food and health for centuries. What\u2019s changing is that the healthcare system is finally beginning to catch up.<\/p>\n Food Scrap Collection Services Grow<\/p>\n The Associated Press reported<\/a> this week on the growth of small food-scrap collection services across the United States.<\/p>\n In Detroit, the company Scrap Soils collects coffee grounds, eggshells, vegetable scraps, and other food waste from homes and businesses and turns it into compost for farms and gardens. And this isn\u2019t happening only in Detroit. There are now more than 400 food waste collection programs around the country including in Baltimore.<\/p>\n Food waste is often framed as an enormous, almost impossible problem.But solutions don\u2019t always need to be so big. They can be a\u00a0truck, buckets, a compost pile, and people who understand that what we call waste can actually be a resource.<\/p>\n Companies Fail to Grasp Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Caused by Climate Change<\/p>\n A recent analysis from the Food and Land Use Coalition<\/a> is warning that many of the world\u2019s biggest food companies still don\u2019t fully understand how vulnerable their supply chains are to climate change.<\/p>\n Companies may model drought or extreme heat, for example, but don\u2019t account for what happens when drought, wildfire, pests, deforestation, and water shortages start interacting with one another. And that\u2019s increasingly the world farmers are operating in.<\/p>\n Climate change doesn\u2019t arrive one problem at a time. That\u2019s why resilience isn\u2018t just about developing a new technology. The world needs healthier soils, more diverse farms, better water management, better data, and supply chains that aren\u2019t built around the assumption that tomorrow will look like yesterday. And companies need to invest in that resilience alongside farmers, not simply push the risk down the supply chain.<\/p>\n FAO Pushes for Investment in Dryland Forests<\/p>\n The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is highlighting the need<\/a> for more funding to support the world\u2019s dryland forests.<\/p>\n These landscapes support communities, livestock, biodiversity, and food production, but they\u2019re under enormous pressure from climate change, degradation, and unsustainable land use.<\/p>\n This is sometimes forgotten when talking about food systems. Food doesn\u2019t begin and end on a farm. Forests are part of our food and agriculture systems. Water is part of our food system. Biodiversity is part of our food system. Protecting those resources isn\u2019t separate from feeding people. It\u2019s fundamental to it.<\/p>\n African Union Calls for Support for Climate-Resilient Seeds<\/p>\n