NYC officials invest in nutrition to prevent disease with it's "Fruits and Vegetables Prescription Program." Allowing fruits and Veggies to be prescribed as a treatment for obesity.

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Author Gila Brand
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NYC allows doctors to prescribe fresh fruit and vegetables as treatment for obesity; FDA declares veggies 'unapproved drugs'

Sunday, July 28, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) These days, it's difficult to find examples of government doing anything that makes sense. That's all the more reason why a program embraced by New York City is newsworthy. Dubbed the "Fruit and Vegetables Prescription Program," it allows doctors to "prescribe" fresh fruit and vegetables to overweight or obese patients by giving them "Health Bucks" that are redeemable at local farmer's markets.
See the announcement of this program at the Wholesome Wave website.
This program makes New York City the largest U.S. city to officially acknowledge that fruits and vegetables have a role to play in preventing chronic degenerative disease -- an idea that the FDA insists is delusional. According to the FDA, there is no such thing as any fruit, vegetable, supplement or superfood that has any ability whatsoever to prevent, treat or cure any disease.
Sure, the FDA's belief is ancient history in terms of present-day knowledge about nutrition and disease, but it's still federal policy. And according to the FDA, the mere "prescribing" of a food as something to prevent obesity automatically transforms that food into a "drug." Under current FDA regulations, then, NYC is guilty of promoting "unapproved drugs" which are really just fruits and vegetables. But that's how FDA logic works.

NYC officials invest in nutrition to prevent disease

New York doesn't seem to be letting the FDA's outdated delusions stop it from pursuing the "Fruits and Vegetables Prescription Program," however. Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Health Commissioner Thomas Farley announced the program last week, and by all accounts the program has been met with widespread approval. It allows families that are prescribed the Health Bucks to redeem them for fresh produce at over 140 New York City farmer's markets.
As WFEV reports:
Bronx resident Tammy Futch said her family has seen positive changes since starting the program.
"My son lost 40 pounds behind this program," she said, "and also I lost weight doing it with him and also I have my other kids, I have four other kids also doing the program."
The Prescription Program was started by Wholesome Wave in 2011 and has since been expanded to seven states.

Natural News endorses the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program

For the record, all of us here at Natural News openly endorse this program, and we think it needs to be vastly expanded. To understand why, let's talk about the role of government and food stamps for a moment.
Right now, 100+ million Americans are on some form of federal food aid. Much of that is through the USDA's "SNAP" program, often called "food stamps" even though that's not the official name anymore.
The SNAP program is nothing more than a big government handout to junk food manufacturers and soda companies. That's because food stamp money can be spent on all the processed junk foods and sodas that make people sick and diseased with conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease and more. Through SNAP, the federal government is subsidizing the foods that cause sickness! Obviously, this also drives up health care costs and deeply harms the overall U.S. economy.
What if we took the federal SNAP program and turned the entire thing into the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program?
What I mean here is to shift the SNAP program so that all processed junk foods are disallowed. Update the rules so that SNAP funds can only be used to buy fresh produce and a few basic staples such as rice, oats, beans, salt and so on.
All of a sudden, you'd see a nationwide shift away from disease and toward vastly improved health. Disease rates would plummet, but so would the share prices of junk food companies like PepsiCo, Kraft and Coca-Cola. You'd also see lower rates of chronic degenerative disease, and this would hurt the profits of the all-powerful drug companies, hospitals and cancer industry profiteers. For these reasons, the food and medicine lobby will incessantly pressure the USDA to make sure SNAP continues to keep Americans sick and diseased. After all, billions of dollars in profits are at stake here, and the drug companies have a powerful lobby.
So don't expect the feds to do anything other than keep poisoning America through SNAP. That's the purpose of the program, it seems: to sicken the population and trap Americans in a never-ending cycle of medical dependence while enriching the drug companies.

Cities can succeed where the federal government fails

But on a city-by-city basis, forward-thinking people are starting to fight back against the "industry of death" offered by the USDA and its junk food subsidy programs. That's why New York City deserves a lot of credit for this particular program: it's investing taxpayer money directly into the health of people who are on the verge of becoming huge financial burdens on the health care system.
See, for every dollar you spend subsidizing real nutrition in the population -- fresh fruits, vegetables or superfoods -- you'll probably save $10 or more in averted health care costs over the long term. Healthy foods are a fantastic investment because they're cheap to buy but extremely valuable in terms of the lifesaving medicines they provide.

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