With the wellness movement and demand for food delivery both in full swing, a company called Phood Farmacy has decided to combine the two and launch a new concept: a virtual restaurant for medicinal foods.
According to a press release sent out this morning, Phood Farmacy sells pre-made, farm-fresh food, using “ingredient combinations designed to be preventative and/or healing.” Think lots of acai, leafy greens, fish, and the ubiquitous avocado toast. Menu items cover multiple different diets: chemo, keto, vegan, and gluten-free, to name a few.
It being a virtual restaurant, there’s no in-house dining room for Phood Farmacy. Instead, customers can order single items via Grubhub or the company website, or sign up for a three-day meal kit plan. The latter includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days, as well as snack items, and is completely vegan. Picky eaters, take note: As of right now, it looks like you don’t get to choose individual dishes within the meal kit.
Meal kits as medicine are becoming more of a trend as consumers look to take health back into their own hands and prevent rather than treat illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. Since I’m not a doctor, I won’t try and determine the medicinal value of meal kits and locally grown veggies. However, at SKS 2018 in Seattle last October, Lighter’s CEO, Alexis Fox, told us the story of how Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams more or less reversed Type 2 diabetes by dumping the traditional American diet and switching to a plant-based one. So at the very least, offerings like those from Phood Farmacy could play a role in boosting health, and maybe even preventing some conditions.
Trouble is, medicinal and/or plant-based diets that give you the right amount of calories and nutrients require a lot of planning, particularly if you’ve never done one before. So a virtual kitchen peddling ready-made meals and easy-to-make kits seems like the obvious next step, since it’s providing the kind of convenience and assistance many of us need to make any kind of significant change to our diets.
Phood Farmacy only operates in the Los Angeles area right now. Outside of the City of Angels, you can check out doctor and nutritionist recommended meal kits from the likes of Be Well Eats and BistroMD.
