People with diabetes might fare better if health care professionals pick out and deliver their groceries, a new study says.

Folks with diabetes who received home deliveries of diabetes-appropriate grocery boxes for three months had better blood sugar control by the end of the experiment, researchers reported in the December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

It’s not necessarily that people would make bad food choices, as their diet quality didn’t change significantly, researchers said.

Instead, these food deliveries simply made it easier for people to get healthy groceries.

“This study demonstrates the potential for home-delivered, medically tailored groceries to make measurable improvements in diabetes management for people experiencing food insecurity and facing transportation barriers,” said lead investigator Eliza Short, a research scientist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Center for Nutrition & Health Impact.

“For many people with Type 2 diabetes, reliable access to healthy food is not just a convenience — it’s essential health care,” Short said in a news release.

For the study, researchers recruited 101 people with diabetes to receive a weekly food box for 12 weeks. Participants were enrolled from five food pantries located in Northwest Arkansas between August 2021 and February 2023.

The boxes followed the American Diabetes Association’s guidelines for healthy diet, which emphasize non-starchy vegetables, proteins and grains. They included fresh fruits and vegetables, along with other ingredients needed to prepare the included recipes.

The boxes also contained diabetes self-management educational materials in English, Spanish or Marshallese, researchers said. (Arkansas has a significant population from the Marshall Islands in the North Pacific, where Marshallese is spoken.)

By the end of the study, participants had experienced a substantial decrease in their hemoglobin A1c levels, a key marker of blood sugar control.

These results contribute to the growing field of Food Is Medicine treatments, in which nutritious food is used as a meant of preventing or treating diet-related illness, researchers said.

They said future studies should explore which elements of such a program – food delivery, nutrition education, or both — best influence the participants’ health.