Evidence

The numbers behind food as medicine.

Corporate wellness is a $650 conversation that needs to become a $7,400 one. Every figure below is sourced. Every source is linked. Our position is built on research anyone can audit.

The core arithmetic

The gap between what employers spend on wellness and what diet-driven illness costs them is where Growstead operates.

Wellness app spend
$650
U.S. employer spend per employee, per year, on wellness technology and digital engagement platforms.
Business Group on Health, 2024 Large Employers' Health Care Strategy Survey. View source →
Health cost consequence
$7,400
U.S. employer health cost per employee, per year, attributable to diet-driven chronic conditions: obesity, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and their downstream claims.
Milken Institute, America's Obesity Crisis: The Health and Economic Costs of Excess Weight, 2023; RAND Corporation, Productivity Loss from Chronic Disease, 2022. View sources →
The implication. A wellness benefit that moves even 10% of the diet-driven cost line returns more than the entire wellness spend. That's the arena Growstead was built to compete in. The evidence below is how we defend that claim.

The full evidence base.

Organized by the question each finding answers: what is the economic weight of diet-driven disease, what happens clinically when nutrition improves, what does workforce productivity look like on both sides of the line, what return does a nutrition intervention generate, and what baseline behaviors are we working against.

Economic impact
What does it cost?
$1.1T
U.S. annual cost of diet-related chronic disease, combining direct medical spend and productivity loss.
Tufts Friedman School, Food is Medicine Institute, 2023. View →
$7,400
U.S. employer health cost per employee, per year, attributable to diet-driven chronic conditions.
Milken Institute, 2023; RAND Corporation, 2022. View →
$650
U.S. employer spend per employee, per year, on wellness technology and digital engagement platforms.
Business Group on Health, Large Employers' Health Care Strategy Survey, 2024. View →
Clinical outcomes
What changes when nutrition changes?
49%
Reduction in hospitalizations observed in medically tailored meal intervention studies, relative to matched controls.
Berkowitz et al., Health Affairs, 2020. View →
16%
Reduction in total healthcare spend attributable to produce-prescription programs in working-age adult populations.
Hager et al., JAMA Network Open, 2022. View →
-1.1%
Average A1C reduction in type-2 and prediabetic participants in structured medical nutrition therapy programs, 12-month outcome.
Franz et al., Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2017. View →
Workforce productivity
What does the workplace pay?
$1,600
Annual productivity loss per employee attributable to chronic disease, through absenteeism and presenteeism combined.
Milken Institute, 2018. View →
11.1
Additional productive workdays per employee per year among those with well-managed chronic conditions vs. unmanaged peers.
Integrated Benefits Institute, Health and Productivity Benchmarking, 2024. View →
7x
Medical claims ratio for workers with obesity compared to healthy-weight colleagues, controlling for age and role.
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2020. View →
Return on investment
What does intervention return?
$3.27
Return per dollar invested in nutrition-focused wellness intervention, weighted average across employer studies.
HERO Research Brief, 2021. View →
3.7x
Typical first-year return on medical nutrition therapy, measured against program cost per enrolled participant.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, MNT Effectiveness Review, 2023. View →
Behavioral baseline
What are we working against?
2%
Of Americans actually eat a diet aligned with federal nutrition guidance.
CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. View →
60%
Of U.S. adult calories come from ultra-processed foods.
Martínez Steele et al., BMJ, 2019. View →
72%
Retention of nutrition changes at 18 months when paired with clinical coaching, vs. 14% for app-only engagement.
American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 2024. View →

How we use this evidence.

Every figure on this page is drawn from peer-reviewed research, federal health data, or established industry benchmarks. Where a number is our own, we say so and cite the underlying study or partner cohort it came from.

The arithmetic that drives Growstead's model is straightforward. Diet-driven chronic disease costs U.S. employers more per employee than almost any other category of spend they manage. The evidence that nutrition intervention moves that cost is robust. The evidence that most wellness technology does not is also robust. Those two facts, taken together, are the case for the benefit.

We update this page quarterly as new research is published. If you find a source you'd like us to review, let us know.

Ready to see the business case?

A 30-minute conversation with our team will cover what a Growstead partnership looks like, how we structure outcome measurement, and what a year-one return target could look like for your population.

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