#271 Why Prescribing Food Could Fix the Healthcare Crisis with Jonathan Pauling
30th Oct 2024
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.
Episode guests
Jonathan is the Chief Executive at Alexandra Rose Charity. 10 years ago he helped develop its new mission - to improve access to healthy and affordable food for all. Jonathan built the Rose Vouchers for Fruit & Veg Project to pioneer the use of financial incentives to help families on low incomes avoid food 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. In 2022 the Charity launched Fruit & Veg on Prescription working in partnership with GP’s, social prescribers, and community health organisations to test how fruit & veg vouchers could support people to manage long term health conditions.
Jonathan has spent the past 25 years working at the nexus of food, health, equity, and sustainability. He grew up in New Zealand and studied at the University of Canterbury before emigrating to the UK in 2002. Before joining Alexandra Rose Charity he worked on improving food access in East London and as a Senior Policy Advisor to the London Food Board.
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