Meal delivery could be the key to cutting health care costs, nutritional researchers claim.
Not just any meals, though. For patients who have certain conditions that require special diets and restrict their ability to perform daily activities, bringing them medically tailored meals (MTMs) could lead to “substantial savings,” according to a study by the American Society for Nutrition.
Based on prior MTM programs that provided 10 meals per week for an eight-month period, the study concluded that a wider rollout would result in cost savings in almost every U.S. state.
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Using data from nearly seven million U.S. adults with “diet-sensitive chronic diseases,” researchers used computer models to predict how using MTMs would affect health care costs and hospitalizations.
The findings were presented at NUTRITION 2024, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held earlier this month in Chicago.
Benefits of medically tailored meals
With MTM programs, dietitian nutritionists create customized meal plans that cater to each patient’s individual health needs, according to a press release from the American Society for Nutrition.
The ready-to-eat meals are then delivered to patients’ homes.
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These programs have been tested in certain regions of the U.S., but are not yet widely available.
“Even accounting for implementation costs, our research estimates that medically tailored meals (MTMs) would generate net cost savings across nearly all states for patients with diet-sensitive conditions (diabetes and heart disease) and limitations in daily activities,” Shuyue Deng, lead study author and doctoral student at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Fox News Digital via email.
Connecticut was the state with the highest amount of savings, at $6,219 per year.
Other states with top savings included Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona and Ohio.
This type of meal delivery was also shown to reduce hospitalizations across all states, Deng said.
There was a wide variation in cost savings and reduced hospitalizations across states, the researchers found.
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Maryland, for example, had a comparatively low net annual policy cost savings per MTM-treated patient, but relatively high averted hospitalizations, according to Deng.
Conversely, Connecticut had a high net annual policy cost savings per MTM-treated patient, but relatively low averted hospitalizations.
California was found to have the largest number of patients who would be eligible for MTMs (more than 1,220,000) and Alaska has the smallest (around 17,800), the findings stated.
Additional benefits may include increased independence and quality of life among patients who may not otherwise be able to shop for groceries and prepare meals, the researchers found.
“Based on our new findings, health care plans should consider integrating MTMs into their care regimen for patients with chronic conditions and limited activities of daily living,” Deng said.
“State policymakers should also look into ways to expand access to MTMs through insurance coverage and public health initiatives.”
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Christopher Gardner, PhD, nutrition scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and professor of Medicine at Stanford University in California, agreed that states could cut health care costs by delivering patient-tailored meals.
“There is strong evidence that dietary habits are important for optimal health,” Gardner, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.
“Poor dietary habits are linked to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Treating those conditions in the health care system is very expensive.”
Making healthful dietary changes can help prevent or treat those chronic diseases, which will reduce health care costs, the doctor said.
“If medically tailored meals can help someone with, or at risk of, a chronic disease to make healthful dietary changes, the expense of providing the meals could be covered by the lower health care costs,” he added.
‘Food is medicine’
Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed an initiative called “Food is Medicine,” which focuses on “integrating consistent access to diet- and nutrition-related resources,” according to the HHS website.
“One of the principles of Food is Medicine is to tailor or personalize the meals for people/patients to increase satisfaction and increase consumption,” said Gardner.
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The approach also includes medically tailored groceries (delivering or subsidizing healthy grocery items) and produce prescriptions (deliveries or availability of healthy vegetables and fruits).
“The medically tailored meals would be part of an overall larger strategy to support healthy and sustainable dietary change,” Gardner added.
The importance of personalized meals
When meal plans aren’t personalized, Gardner said, people are less likely to stick with them.
“Past studies have shown that simply making and providing healthy meals is not sufficient to support substantive and sustainable dietary change,” he said.
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If the meals don’t meet the person’s taste preferences or food intolerances, or are not “culturally appropriate,” they are less likely to be consumed, said Gardner.
“Poor dietary habits are linked to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Treating those conditions in the health care system is very expensive.”
If the meals are not matched to a patient’s clinical condition — such as low sodium for heart failure, low simple carbohydrates for diabetes or low saturated fat for heart disease — those meals will not be as effective, the expert noted.
Cost is one of the primary barriers to implementing MTMs, the study found.
“The costs associated with MTMs include the cost of producing and delivering the meals, the cost of hiring dietitian nutritionists and the administrative cost of managing the programs,” the researchers wrote.
The person would also require the necessary kitchen appliances to heat and store the provided meals, Gardner added.
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Questions also remain about the optimal number of meals and the target length of duration for these programs, he added.
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to conduct further research into factors influencing the program’s cost, such as variations in food prices across the country.
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