Kroger Health, Kroger’s healthcare arm, is collaborating with Performance Kitchen to offer medically tailored meals. This will be the first time Kroger Health offers meals for people living with various health conditions including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Medically tailored meals are created to meet the specific needs of individuals and may significantly improve a person's overall health and wellness while providing access to nutritious foods, according to Kroger Health.
"We believe in empowering people with resources to help them make healthy choices that will deliver the best outcomes for them," said James Kirby, chief commercial officer at Kroger Health, in a statement. "Offering MTMs [medically tailored meals] allows us an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to supporting individuals on their wellness journeys while providing a personalized approach to help them transform their health."
A recent evidence review and national simulation modeling study by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University estimated that medically tailored meal programs could help prevent 1.6 million hospitalizations and save health insurers $13.6 billion across the country in one year after paying for the cost of food, shared Kroger.
Both companies seek to offer culturally relevant meals that meet nutritional standards. The options are frozen, single-serve, and ready-to-heat, and include Chicken Dijon with Kale, Moroccan Style Chicken with Quinoa, Vegetable Chickpea Curry, and Salmon Pasta. Kroger Health can pair the meals with other services such as virtual appointments with registered dietitians and access to healthy groceries.
"We're excited to work with Kroger Health in our unified goal of empowering the country to live healthier lives through food," said Mark Walker, chairman and CEO of Performance Kitchen, in a statement. "In a country where we spend $4.3 trillion on sick care annually, states and insurance companies that have begun offering millions of Americans these new meal benefits, along with organizations like Kroger Health who are making these benefits available, should be celebrated. "
The collaboration is the latest initiative from Kroger Health's Food as Medicine platform, which comes after the release of SuperWIN, a retail-based randomized controlled trial, and the company's participation in the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.
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