October 6, 2026

@michaelokun

What resonates most with me about this work featured today in USA TODAY is how directly it connects two ideas I care deeply about: levodopa for all and food as medicine. Levodopa remains the most effective symptomatic treatment for Parkinson’s disease, yet access remains inadequate in many parts of the world; this UF/IFAS–Fixel collaboration asks whether agriculture can become part of the solution by harnessing velvet beans, which naturally produce unusually high levels of L-DOPA. Jeongim Kim and her team are studying how the plant makes and regulates L-DOPA; Kelly Balmant is sequencing the velvet bean genome and examining gene expression across cultivars; and the broader team including Adegbola Adesogan, Guodong David Liu, Eduardo Vallejos, Marjatta Eilitta along w/ our team at the Norman Fixel Institute is bringing agriculture, genetics, chemistry, engineering and Parkinson’s medicine together. They are even asking whether lessons from velvet beans could eventually increase naturally occurring L-DOPA in more familiar foods such as fava beans and soybeans. This is exactly what Food is Medicine should look like: not replacing proven Parkinson’s therapies, but using science, agriculture and innovation to explore scalable new ways to improve access and ultimately move us closer to the goal of levodopa for everyone who needs it, everywhere in the world. https://usatodayspecial-va.newsmemory.com/?special=Food+As+Medicine+2026&date=20260915