#178 Prescribing Fruit & Vegetables with Jonathan Pauling

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. 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. 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. 🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here 📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free You can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too. Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week. 🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan 📷 Follow on Instagram 🐦 Tweet me We would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages ( Instagram , Facebook & Twitter ) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.