Maggie Troope Biscarr is one of Clareo’s industry experts and co-leader of The Nourish Movement, where she helps organizations come together to navigate the evolving landscape of Food as Medicine. Maggie moderated a panel at the 2025 Food as Medicine Summit in Chicago, and these are her key insights:
Having spent years navigating the corporate and non-profit food industry, and working around the security and access issues, as well as food as medicine, I’m very excited at the emerging opportunities for cross-sector collaboration. Over the years I’ve learned to spot emerging patterns. And at the Food as Medicine 2025 Summit, moderating the panel ‘Overcoming Access Hurdles to Food as Medicine’ with leaders from healthcare, technology, and food assistance, one insight stood out.
Right now, the biggest barriers to scaling food as medicine are less about technical limitations and more about misaligned incentives between sectors and invisible capabilities.
The $70 billion misalignment
Food-insecure individuals incur almost $2,000 more in healthcare costs annually than those who are food-secure. That’s over $70 billion in potentially preventable annual healthcare spending. Yet despite these compelling numbers, healthcare bears the costs while food could provide the solution, and these two sectors rarely coordinate effectively.
What’s changing is that smart players are finding ways to bridge this gap. Healthcare systems are redirecting existing community benefit obligations rather than chasing grants. Technology platforms are treating food access as infrastructure, not charity. The business model innovation is happening – it’s just not always visible.
The choice revolution
In my opinion, one of the overlooked insights was the way technology is transforming food assistance from a one-size-fits-all model to true consumer choice. When you can digitally recreate the supermarket experience, complete with nutritional guidance and cultural preferences, you’re not just solving logistics – you’re enabling empowerment.
This matters because choice (or empowerment) drives engagement. Programs which let people select their own foods see dramatically higher participation rates than those that prescribe specific items. It’s the subtle difference between treating people as recipients, not consumers, and thinking about the way people actually choose foods.
The invisible infrastructure
Perhaps the biggest revelation from the panel discussion is the sophistication already present in the emergency food system, built to drive better health outcomes and break people out of the food insecurity/poverty cycle. We’re talking about networks with dedicated nutrition staff, registered dietitians, and referral completion rates that would make any corporate program envious.
Most healthcare systems don’t realize this capacity exists in their own communities. It’s a perfect example of what happens when sectors don’t talk—missed opportunities for everyone.
The magic wand moment
When I asked panellists what they’d manifest with a magic wand, their responses weren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams but pragmatic next steps: dietitians wanting to hand patients produce prescriptions or a box of fruit and vegetables immediately after consultations, streamlined systems enabling one-click food delivery, and sustainable funding structures beyond grants.
To me, this evolution from idealistic to pragmatic thinking signals a movement reaching maturity.
The convergence opportunities
It’s increasingly clear that the most successful programs are occurring where healthcare’s clinical expertise meets technology’s operational efficiency and the food sector’s community knowledge. Each organization is doing what it does best, together solving problems that none could tackle alone. It takes courage and foresight to connect across sectors, but the results speak for themselves.
For food companies, healthcare systems, and technology platforms willing to look beyond traditional partnerships, the infrastructure for transformation already exists. The question isn’t whether Food as Medicine will reshape how we think about health, but whether established players will adapt quickly enough to be part of that transformation.
