#178 Prescribing Fruit & Vegetables with Jonathan Pauling
21st Dec 2022
Jonathan Pauling is Chief Executive of the Alexandra Rose Charity, whose vision is for everyone to have access to healthy and affordable food and whose mission is to give families access to fresh fruit & vegetables in their communities.
On a previous episode of the doctors kitchen podcast you may remember me chatting with Professor Guy Standing about Universal Basic Income. This was at the height of the pandemic, furlough was in full swing and the concept of a guaranteed minimum salary was gathering pace. Having that discussion made me think about the possibility of prescribing fruit and vegetables in the NHS. The concept wasn’t warmly received by Professor Guy, for reasons that we will discuss today, but I’m pleased to say it could actually become a reality!
I hadn’t come across the charity before, but our values are so aligned! It was founded in 1912 by Queen Alexandra and established to support Londoners in poverty. Inspired by a priest in her native Denmark selling roses to raise money for those in need, Queen Alexandra brought the idea back to the UK.
Real roses were substituted for silk ones, and Rose Day was created. The funds raised from the sale of these roses was distributed to help Londoners in poverty access healthcare. Today, their focus is on the issue of food poverty.
In a landmark study that started a few months ago, they are trialling rose vouchers that are exchangeable for healthy fruit and vegetables from street market vendors in deprived areas. This latest trial is on the back of years of work across other areas in the UK and pilots where they’re also involved in cooking workshops and healthy start vouchers for families with young children. Something that Johnathan mentions on the podcast today really hit home to me. He said we can’t just tackle financial inequality, we have to tackle health inequality.
And from previous schemes they’ve already demonstrated that simply increasing fruit and vegetable consumption can lead to improvements in energy, digestive health and reduced the reliance on processed foods. That isn’t to say this is a cure-all for poverty, but it’s definitely something we should be looking at to “level up”.
I’ve wished for the ability to prescribe healthy food and this study could pave the way for that reality.
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.
References/sources
Fruit & Veg on Prescription Articles:
https://www.alexandrarose.org.uk/support-us/online-donations/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/22/fresh-fruit-and-veg-given-to-low-income-families-in-uk-trial
Links from the podcast
https://www.alexandrarose.org.uk/about-us/mission/
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