Medically Tailored Meal Programs Show Health and Cost Benefits, but Face Uncertainty Under Medicaid Cuts
A study published in the journal Nature Medicine found that approximately 1,900 Massachusetts Medicaid patients who received medically tailored meals for at least three months had 20% fewer emergency department visits and 31% fewer hospitalizations compared to similar patients who did not receive meals. The 2025 law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut projected Medicaid funding by more than $900 billion, creating budget pressure on states that fund such programs. Thirteen states have received federal waivers to use Medicaid dollars for meal delivery, with three additional programs awaiting federal approval.
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A Boston nonprofit called Community Servings prepares scratch-made, medically tailored meals for Medicaid patients who are unable to shop or cook for themselves. Volunteers prepare dishes calibrated to individual health needs — accounting for diagnoses, medications, side effects, and food allergies — and deliver them to recipients' homes each week.
The Massachusetts study, led by Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor at Tufts University, found that meals costing $125 per person per week essentially paid for themselves in reduced healthcare utilization. Patients with heart disease used roughly $10,000 less in healthcare services over six months; patients with kidney disease used $12,000 less. Mozaffarian estimated that nationwide, medically tailored meals could prevent 1.6 million hospitalizations annually and save the U.S. $13.6 billion in healthcare costs each year, and that poor nutrition is the leading cause of preventable healthcare spending in the country.
The future of such programs is now uncertain. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced projected Medicaid funding by more than $900 billion, and policy analyst Amaya Diana of KFF said states will face difficult choices as they work to fill funding gaps. North Carolina, for example, suspended food and housing supports in 2025 over budget concerns before partially restoring the program after summer deliberations — a pattern that Kurt Hager, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and co-author of the Massachusetts study, described as a potential preview of what other states may encounter.