Food Is Medicine
Equiti Foods believes that nutritious food is the foundation of a healthy life and essential in preventing chronic disease. See how Good Bowls have been used to provide people with nutritious and delicious food across North Carolina regardless of where they live or their income.
Food Is Medicine is a public health approach that uses healthy food to prevent and manage chronic disease. With access to the proper meals, people can manage and prevent conditions including diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease and hypertension. Good Bowls recipes are carefully created by a nutritionist and include whole grains, roasted vegetables, healthy oils, lean proteins and the proper levels of carbohydrates, sodium, and potassium - making them an ideal choice in a Food Is Medicine program.
Good Bowls were created by Dr. Alice Ammerman. In addition to being a UNC Chapel Hill nutrition professor she is also the Director of UNC’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Alice has spent her career working the improve nutrition access to North Carolinians as well as managing and preventing chronic disease across the state.
She created Good Bowls as a way to increase access to healthy food for everyone throughout North Carolina. Alice designed Good Bowls as frozen meals to help decrease food waste and to allow various initiatives to distribute meals to people in rural and underserved areas without having to worry about spoilage like with fresh produce or refrigerated meals.
At the heart of the Food Is Medicine approach are fresh fruits and vegetables. Equiti Foods has built a network of farmers throughout North Carolina where we source the wide variety of vegetables that we use in all of our bowls. Our partnerships with Weaver Street Co-op, Farmer Food Share, and Happy Dirt allow us to include local and fresh vegetables in all of our recipes.
Plus since we’re sourcing fresh produce from North Carolina farms and preparing our Bowls in the Triangle, not only are we improving the health of our neighbors with each delicious Bowl, but we’re also improving the health of the North Carolina food system and local farms.
Since the aim of Food Is Medicine is to both prevent and manage chronic disease, Good Bowls has a full line of Medically Tailored Meals. We offer a variety of meals that were created by a nutritionist and designed to meet the guidelines for carb-controlled meals, heart healthy meals, and kidney friendly meals.
Good Bowls come in over 30 flavors and are both culturally relevant and to also provide a fun variety of international flavors. You can learn more about our Medically Tailored Meals here.
The proof is in the pudding - well in our case, in the seasoned roasted vegetables and whole grains. Equiti Foods has been providing healthy meals and medically tailored meals to programs across the state for over 5 years. We’ve increased access to nutritious food by distributing through stores, hospitals, food banks, home delivery, insurance companies, and countless additional programs. Plus we were a leader in the North Carolina Healthy Opportunities Pilot and distributed over 150,000 healthy meals and MTMs to residents in the Cape Fear Region of North Carolina.
The Food Is Medicine philosophy is still in its early stages and at Equiti Foods we will be at the forefront as this program helps people prevent and manage chronic disease and our communities and neighbors are healthier because of it.