CATEGORY: EATING FOR HEART HEALTH
You can take a blood pressure pill every morning and still see readings that sit too high. A Boston trial just showed that groceries can close part of that gap. Adults with treated high blood pressure who received weekly deliveries of DASH-style food saw their systolic pressure (the top number) fall 7 points over three months. People handed an equal amount of grocery money dropped only 2 points. That’s a 5-point difference, won on top of medication everyone kept taking.1
Groceries on One Side, Cash on the Other
The trial, named GoFreshRx, enrolled 176 Black adults living in Boston neighborhoods where supermarkets are scarce. All were on blood pressure medication, with systolic readings between 120 and 149. A random draw split them into two groups. Nobody picked their own side. One group got twelve weeks of home-delivered groceries, selected with a dietitian’s help to match the DASH diet, an eating pattern built on vegetables, fruits, whole grains and low-fat dairy that has been lowering blood pressure in trials since the 1990s. The other group received $500 every four weeks to spend as they wished. That cash arm matters. The comparison isn’t food versus nothing. It’s guided food versus the same money, self-directed.
Five Points, and What Outlasted the Deliveries
The 5-point systolic gap was the trial’s primary outcome, with a confidence range of about 2 to 8 points.1 The bottom number fell 1.8 points more with groceries, and LDL cholesterol dropped an extra 7 mg/dL. Three months after the last box arrived, part of the blood pressure benefit was still measurable. Five points may sound modest. It came from a grocery cart, though, not from adding a second or third pill, and it appeared in people whose prescriptions alone hadn’t finished the job.
The Second Trial to Land This Way
A companion study by the same team, in Black adults whose high blood pressure wasn’t yet being treated, also found that home-delivered DASH groceries lowered systolic pressure.2 Together the two trials make a practical point: when healthy food is actually in the kitchen, chosen with a little expert help, pressure moves whether or not pills are on board. What they can’t settle is cost and staying power. Deliveries ran twelve weeks, in one city. Whether insurers or health systems will pay for food this way is open, and the researchers note the model could be hard to reproduce where delivery services don’t reach.
Key Takeaways
- Home-delivered DASH groceries plus dietitian guidance lowered systolic blood pressure 5 points more than an equal-value grocery stipend in Black adults already on blood pressure medication.
- LDL cholesterol also fell, and part of the blood pressure benefit was still present three months after deliveries ended.
- The trial was small (176 people) and ran twelve weeks in one city, so the cost of the approach and its durability over years remain untested.
References
- Juraschek SP, Col H, Ferro K, et al. DASH-patterned groceries and effects on blood pressure in adults treated for hypertension: the GoFreshRx randomized trial. Nature Medicine. 2026;32(6):2128–2136. link
- Juraschek SP, et al. DASH-Patterned Groceries and Effects on Blood Pressure: The GoFresh Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2026;335(1):36–48. link