If you are looking for healthy food delivery for seniors, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, you will learn what to look for in a food delivery service
Food delivery services are getting more common by the day. Especially after the COVID pandemic and restrictions it has caused globally the demand for home-delivered meals has exploded.
But the problem with many home-delivered meals is that they aren’t really the healthiest option out there. Most restaurants and services focus on making their products tasty and desirable. As you surely know, this isn’t always doesn’t mean the food is healthy.
On the contrary, it’s very easy to stuff a meal full of carbs and saturated fat, sugar, and additives and it will be very tasty and desirable. That’s the reason hamburgers and pizza are still the stables of fast food.
But if you are concerned with your heart health and blood sugar levels, as most seniors should be, your diet is the single most important factor in the equation of healthy living.
It doesn’t matter if you sleep well, exercise enough, and lead a stress-free lifestyle if your diet consists of unhealthy food. Your diet alone can reduce your health, longevity, and energy levels. That’s why it’s important to focus on a healthy diet.
In a perfect world, you would always have the time and energy to make our own meals from delicious fresh ingredients. But as you know that’s not always possible and planning, shopping, and cooking meals take a lot of effort.
When you add the risks of the pandemic to the equation, ready-made meals become are very intriguing idea. Fortunately these days there are healthy options available!
You might also be looking after an aging loved one that doesn’t have the resources to prepare their own meals anymore. A healthy meal delivery service is a great option that will improve their diet and free up your own resources.
The Importance Of A Healthy Diet
Before we look at the best healthy food delivery services I want to take a minute to talk about the importance of your diet to your health.
I’m a firm believer in that a healthy lifestyle is based on four main ingredients:
- Good mental health (this includes low stress, healthy relationships, having enjoyable activities etc.)
- Good sleep habits
- A healthy diet that supports longevity and healthy bodyweight
- Enough exercise to maintain physical health, mobility and balance
Out of all of those three, your diet is actually the easiest to fix. All it takes is a bit of education, planning, and willpower and you can remake even the most horrible of diets to a decently healthy one.
So what exactly is a healthy diet? Well there seem to be a lot of opinions, both professional and non-professional out there but I would put my
There is plenty of evidence that certain foods are good for blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood lipids, while others are bad.
A few years ago there was a huge trend of low carb eating but in case you haven’t been following the news, they turned out to be not that healthy in the long run.
Sure, if you manage to lose a significant amount of body fat on a low-calorie diet, your vitals will likely improve. But the problems weren’t the carbs, it was the bodyweight.
While low carb is effective for some folks to lose weight, it’s for different reasons than they think. They just reduce calories because they leave out a complete macronutrient. Fats and protein are great for satiety so of course, it will help you feel fuller in a caloric deficit.
But it just so happens to be that healthy carb sources are actually the important source of many micronutrients, vitamins, and especially fiber. Fiber and complex carbohydrates are what feet your gut bacteria, the microbiome.
So healthy carbs have been shown over and over again to support healthy weight loss and maintenance and to support a healthy gut biome. Something that is extremely important for your health.
Where do you get healthy carbs from? Vegetables. Tubers, like potatoes, carrots, and sweet potato are great sources of starch and fiber. Beans, lentils, nuts, and peas are a great source of more complex carbohydrates, protein and fat.
Broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, and other vegetables are full of nutrients and fiber and very low in calories. The
So you should really eat your veggies. But how about the other macronutrients of your diet: fat and protein?
Well, both of them can actually be obtained from vegetables and there is growing evidence that this beneficial for your health. I talk more about this in my article Vegan Diet for Seniors.
The truth is that there is more and more evidence that red meat, especially processed, is both bath for your health and detrimental for the environment. Red meat contains heme iron, saturated fats, and in some cases nitrate compounds, all of which have been shown to possess negative health effects.
But if you don’t want to go full vegan, which is completely understandable, you can supplement your vegetable-based diet with low-fat milk products (avoid ones with added sugar), eggs, and lean poultry and fatty fish.
Fish is generally more environmentally friendly than red meat or poultry, but please choose either locally fished or once that have been caught sustainably as overfishing is a huge issue that has caused a mass extinction of many sea life species.
An ideal healthy diet in my opinion is plant-based and locally produced from fresh ingredients. Supplementing with sustainable animal sources is ok if you do it in moderation.
Why Choose Food Delivery?
So why would you choose a food delivery service instead of buying them from the grocery store and cooking the meals yourself? Well, there are several reasons, some more obvious than others.
Even if you are open to a mainly plant-based diet, it might feel overwhelming at first to design your meals if you’ve eaten a regular mixed diet for decades.
While plant-based diets are With a plant-based diet you need to learn how to combine different sources of protein to get all the necessary amino acids and you need to make sure you get things like iron and vitamin b12 which are mainly acquired through meat in a typical diet.
A quality meal service will offer plant-based meals designed by professionals, so they should offer adequate nutritional content designed by professionals.
Another key thing to consider is that making food from fresh vegetables daily requires you to go to the store or market place at least every few days. Because of the pandemic, every trip you take to the store increases your risk of infection.
Professional food delivery services will consider hygiene and safety in their delivery, so you can minimize the risk of infection.
Finally, there is the fact that having ready-made tasty meals is a great investment in your health. The truth is that it’s very easy to just choose unhealthy fast food or skip meals altogether and just eat sandwiches if cooking isn’t your passion. A food delivery service is a solution to this problem.
What To Look For In A Food Delivery Service or Plan?
So what should you look at a food delivery service? In my opinion, it boils down to quality and price.
Quality
Quality can mean several things but in my opinion, what you should look for is the quality of the ingredients in the meals. Things you should focus especially include:
- Where are the ingredients produced
- Are the ingredients fresh?
- Are there a lot of additives, salt, unhealthy fats, etc.?
If you are going to pay for someone to make and deliver your meals, make sure they are healthy and enjoyable.
The meals should of course be nutritionally sound, meaning that they provide all the nutrients and energy to support a healthy lifestyle.
Some companies focus more on taste, which unfortunately isn’t always in line with the health like we discussed earlier. But that doesn’t mean that healthy food can’t be delicious!
Price
While it’s nice to ask for quality, we know that quality often means cost. But it doesn’t always have to be like that! Especially when you choose plant-based diets, the manufacturers can actually reduce the cost and improve the ingredients by removing the most expensive ingredient, meat.
But of course, you should choose a plan you can afford. There is no reason for going into debt because you pay for meals.
The great thing about meal delivery services is that most of them offer several plans. For example, you could order only breakfast or a single warm meal per day.
This will naturally be a lot cheaper than ordering three full meals per day. And you can have a completely healthy diet by having one or two full meals per that you can supplement as you feel necessary.
My Recommendation
So what is my recommendation for healthy food delivery for seniors? Well, I looked at the options, and to be honest, most services lacked in one way or another. Finding food delivery services with a vast network and healthy food is surprisingly hard.
That’s until I stumbled upon Splendid Food. It’s a food delivery service that operates in all lower 48 states and focuses on producing high-quality meals from sustainable vegetable sources.
They offer three different plans:
Breakfast + Lunch + Reset: $135/week
Delivered each week: 5 smoothies, 5 grain/soup bowls, and 5 light soups
Breakfast + Lunch: $95/week
Delivered each week: 5 smoothies and 5 grain/soup bowls
Breakfast: $65/week
Delivered each week: 5 smoothies
I was so convinced by Splendid Spoon’s service and products that I decided to partner up with them and join their affiliate program. I want to be completely upfront about this, so you know I have a personal interest in recommending their service.
If you decide to check them out through my link, I will earn a small commission with no extra cost for you of course. In fact, you will get 10% discounts by joining through my link!
But if you want to check them out and not support my work, that is fine. Just Google their website or go straight to splendidspoon.com and I won’t earn any commissions.
If you do want to support my work and get the 10% discount, use this link.
Conclusion
I hope you found this article about healthy food delivery useful. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me through the comments section below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Food delivery services have come a long way and these days it’s possible to get healthy, nutritious food delivered right to your doorstep at an affordable price point.
Plant-based diets have been shown to be good for longevity and overall health so I recommend you consider a food delivery service
One key thing to remember is to make sure you get enough protein if you eat mainly plant-based. The great news is that you can most definitely get enough high-quality protein from plant sources.
Just include things like tofu, tempeh, beans, chick peas, and hummus in your diet and you’ve got a good base. If you exercise a lot, it might be beneficial to supplement with protein powders after workouts to make sure you get enough nutrients for recovery.
But there is no need to be afraid of a plant-based diet. When planned well, they are healthy and support good heart health and body weight.
Thanks for reading and if you found this post useful, remember to share it on social media!
See you next time.