What are Medically Tailored Meals?

Meals Tailored to Your Dietary Needs

Here’s the simple answer: Using food as medicine can make you healthier.

If you want to improve your health, it’s easy to think there are a million different things you should be doing.

But research points to one factor above all others as being key to a long and healthy life.

That one thing is your diet.

• A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that poor nutrition is a leading cause of disease and early death.
• The World Health Organization says that about two-thirds of all deaths in the world are caused by poor food choices and other lifestyle choices.
• Research shows that eating more fruits and vegetables helps reduce the risk for heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, and certain types of cancer.

Medically-Tailored Meals for Optimal Health

So what should your diet look like to help prevent disease, improve your health, and help you live longer?

It depends. There’s no one-size-fits-all meal plan for everybody.

And that’s why health professionals are turning to medically-tailored meals more often.

• Medically-tailored meals are created by a registered dietitian. These meals are designed using evidence-based nutrition research to help treat and manage chronic diseases and health conditions.

What does a medically tailored diet look like?

It starts with understanding nutrition needs related to a chronic disease or health condition.

For example:

• If you have high blood pressure, you should avoid or limit foods high in sodium, and eat more heart-healthy foods.
• If you’re overweight or obese, learning to practice portion control and eat the right amount of calories will help you tip the scale in the right direction.
• If you have diabetes, eating fewer refined carbohydrates and more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes can help regulate blood sugar levels.

To create a medically tailored diet, a registered dietitian looks at all of these factors to create meals that make sense to promote health, prevent disease, and manage health conditions based on things like:

• Ingredients
• Calories
• Serving size
• Macronutrients

At MagicKitchen.com, we’ve created Medically-Tailored Meals for 12 different categories: including:

• Senior
• Portion Control
• Diabetes
• Dairy Free
• General Wellness
• Low Sodium
• Low Carbohydrate
• Low Fat
• Renal Diet
• Dialysis-Friendly
• Gluten Free
• Vegetarian

If you’re trying to…

• Optimize your health
• Lose weight
• Adjust your diet to manage a chronic disease
• Avoid certain foods to manage a health condition or food allergies…

…chances are pretty good you know you need to eat healthy, says Dr. David Katz, author of Disease Proof: The Remarkable Truth About What Makes Us Well.

“We basically know what to do,” says Katz. “We just don’t do it.”

And there are lots of reasons for that.

But the most common is time. The time it takes to plan a meal, go grocery shopping, prep and cook food, and clean up. Been there, done that?

If you want to improve your diet, eat healthier and prevent or manage chronic disease, check out all of our Medically-Tailored Meals made from fresh ingredients specifically designed to help you eat right and feel better.