For doctors and patients alike, healing chronic conditions with food requires access to several months’ worth of medically tailored meals.
“If you send them meals that are frozen, don’t taste good, or are not culturally relevant, you’re not going to get the outcome you want,” says Bruno Didier, head of B2B at the chef-made meal platform CookUnity.
His company hopes to improve the concept of medically tailored meals via a new partnership with US health insurer EmblemHealth and Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of nonprofit the Preventive Medicine Research Institute.
The initiative will provide medically tailored meals to participants of EmblemHealth’s newly launched project that covers Dr. Ornish’s lifestyle medicine program for patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
The hope, in addition to helping manage chronic disease, is that the program can show patients that eating healthily can be a positive experience for the tastebuds as well as the rest of the body, says Didier.
The best of science and the best of chefs
CookUnity bills itself as a “chef-to-consumer” marketplace. Initially, it made a name for itself as a small-batch meal-delivery service with menus made by chefs, including some James Beard Winners and Iron Chefs.
Over the last decade, the company has expanded its offerings to also include B2B services such as workplace meals, corporate catering, and meals for patients in healthcare settings.
Didier says that EmblemHealth was the one to reach out to CookUnity initially.
“Our approach at CookUnity is [the same as] what EmblemHealth is doing: We want to bring the best of science and the best of chefs that we have in the US to create the most impactful medically tailored meal line to people.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Ornish, who is also a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a longtime advocate of the idea that lifestyle changes such as diet can help reverse the progression of chronic disease.
The program meals will be aligned with Dr. Ornish’s work, which emphasizes whole food, plant-based meals and snacks along with exercise and stress management.
It will initially take place across the State of New York (CookUnity is based in Brooklyn), with plans to expand to more geographies in the future.
Participants in the EmblemHealth Alzheimer’s Pilot Study Program can choose from more than a dozen ready-to-eat meals provided by CookUnity. These meals are “designed to meet the dietary needs of participants in coordination with the specific nutritional needs of Alzheimer’s patients.”
To date, CookUnity’s chefs have crafted an opening set of 14 meals, with plans to expand to 28 in the coming weeks.
Didier says that CookUnity employs a food safety and quality assurance team to monitor menu creation and ensure meals include the correct ingredients in the right amounts for this particular set of patients.
Barriers to healthy eating
More than 7 million people in the US over the age of 65 live with Alzheimer’s dementia. Causes of the disease aren’t fully understood at this point, though many scientists believe it’s a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors that impact the brain.
“Lifestyle and diet play a critical role in how we live and how we age,” said Dr. Dan Knecht, Chief Medical Officer at EmblemHealth.
For this program to succeed, he says, the medically tailored meals have to be “both culturally relevant and delicious.”
“This program isn’t just about science, it’s about dignity and joy. Meals that reflect our members’ heritage and taste preferences aren’t just nourishing, they’re healing.”
One major challenge to fighting chronic disease with food is pricing.
“Access to healthy, affordable, and delicious meals remains a major challenge for many,” says Knecht.
He echoes a recent survey from Rockefeller Foundation that reported 49% of the public and 67% of healthcare workers seeing the high cost of food as “the single biggest obstacle to eating well.”
Didier also cites education as an ongoing challenge. “You can have the dietitian sending you meals plans, but then people either don’t can’t access or don’t buy the ingredients. Or if they do, they don’t cook it well, and so there is still a barrier to access healthy food.”
The beauty of medically tailored meals such as those from CookUnity is that patients are shown that something healthy can taste good and be an enjoyable experience, he says.
‘We are what we eat’
Didier says there are plans to eventually take the EmblemHealth program nationwide, and that it could also expand to address other chronic diseases in future.
CookUnity also has initiatives with Elevance Health and Anthem, as well as a couple of “big names” that are undisclosed at this time, says Didier. Initiatives cover everything from preventative care and cancer recovery to meals that accompany GLP-1 treatment.
CookUnity also has clinical advisors from Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic to provide expertise when it comes to creating meals and menus.
“It’s often said that we are what we eat, and we believe the right recipes can empower better health,” says Didier, adding that these collaborations reflect CookUnity’s mission “to deliver nourishing, chef-crafted meals—and deepens our commitment to scaling medically tailored solutions.”
