New Tech Platform Provides Healthy Food As Medicine Via Meal Delivery ‘Prescriptions’
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With an aim to address diet-related illnesses, bring down healthcare costs and increase food literacy, new health-tech company, Everything Food follows a “food as medicine” approach and launched a full suite of tools and resources for the healthcare industry and consumers.
Southern California food data aggregator and software technology platform, Everything Food wants to create an ecosystem facilitating people to build a healthy relationship with food and in the process, limit diet-related illnesses like diabetes and heart disease as well as the costs of treating such conditions.
Better Health Through Better Food
Founders of the company are food and health experts that are working towards including healthy and nutritious foods in consumers’ diets and for this purpose, they have created a platform connecting farmers, chefs, restaurants, health care providers, and consumers to gain better health through nutrition.
Designed as a micro-supply chain solution, the company offers a new software platform called FoodFarmacy through which hospitals and health institutions connect chronically ill patients who are eligible for support through Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance or community service programs, to healthy, chef-prepared meals and fresh produce that will be delivered to their homes.
The next solution is a food database that contains more than 1.5 million food items from over 42,000 U.S. grocery stores and from product ingredients to nutrition levels, to how the food was raised, grown or processed can be found here.
We realized our technology could help on multiple levels — not just from a medical standpoint with the healthcare industry, but also from an educational and community perspective
Peter Balsells, CEO, Everything Food
In addition, via search tools, consumers can check the quality, pricing and availability of food products at local grocery stores on the MapMyCart website.
The Most Comprehensive Food Platform
“The Everything Food team has been on a multi-year journey to develop the most comprehensive and customizable food platform on the market to improve overall health and wellbeing,” Everything Food CEO Peter Balsells said in a statement. “As we dove deeper, we realized our technology could help on multiple levels — not just from a medical standpoint with the healthcare industry, but also from an educational and community perspective. Our vision is to include local businesses like hospitals, restaurants and produces distributors as part of the solution to improve community health.”
Other features will include PlateCraft, a mobile app to enable users make better nutritional choices and a ‘nutrition exchange’ tool that will help them select and switch to foods that have the same nutritional content.
Read: 4 Food Techs Developing Sustainable & Healthy Food Solutions
Our vision is to include local businesses like hospitals, restaurants and produces distributors as part of the solution to improve community health
Peter Balsells, CEO, Everything Food
The company is in talks with several hospitals, clinics and governments with the first program schedule to launch early summer.
Working With Hospitals
The platform has a Dietitian Advisory Committee to help them make decisions based on real experience with clients or patients with the present committee including doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, and professors, some of who work at Boston Children’s Hospital, California Polytechnic State University, University of Southern California, and Palomar Health, while others have their own practices.
Another U.S.- based nutrition platform that follows the same food-as-medicine approach is Project Well which works to better the lives of those dealing with diet-sensitive chronic diseases as well as food insecurity and aims to address this with dietitian–vetted food solutions.
In a report conducted last year in the U.K., consumers demanded that healthy foods are priced reasonably and are made easily available in grocery shops with 71% saying that they would support government subsidies that make healthy foods cheaper and around half stating that they want to see standardised packaging on unhealthy products that carry warnings similar to those on cigarette packaging.
Lead image courtesy of Everything Food.
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