Online Ordering Now Live!
Thank you all for your patience and words of encouragement to help us bring Real Food Blends to this point. I am so happy to announce that the store is now open and accepting orders at RealFoodBlends.com. And as a mom of a tube-fed kiddo, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to provide these meals to all of you.
A few important tidbits for you to know:
– Shipping: Orders will ship in 3-4 days, we can only ship in the United States for now and your entire order will ship for just $8.
– Order Limits: We have limited each order to 2 cases of each variety (so 4 total cases now). I wish we could send everyone as much as they want right away, but as a new company, this is our first production run and we want to make sure as many people as possible can start enjoying our meals. As we gather feedback from each of you, we will move forward on to full scale production. (Remember, the meals are shelf-stable for 3 years!)
– About the Chicken meal: UPDATE 2/5/14 You can now reserve 2 cases of the chicken meals. These will be sent to you by March 15th – still a flat rate of $8 for shipping on your entire order! [The chicken meal will not be available for purchase for a couple more weeks. (Long story short: USDA approval on the packaging took a long time! Everything is approved now and printing of the cartons will happen next week.)]
– More coming! We have already scheduled our next production run, but it will take us at least 10-12 weeks before we can start shipping more meals. We are working as hard as possible to estimate demand, but we do expect to sell out of our meals quickly and there will be a delay before more meals are available. Thanks in advance for your continued patience and support as we move toward full-scale production.
A few people have asked about the delay from when we had the meals made to actually being able to open the store. Our meals were made at an FDA & USDA regulated facility and we felt it safest to then ship the meals to food-grade fulfillment centers to be packed and shipped to customers. Believe me, I would have turned the store on, piled them in my garage and packed the boxes myself if I could have!!
Again, thank again for your support. After we deliver these first meals, we’ll be moving quickly to full-scale production and we’re excited to be able to have these readily available to all of you. We look forward to getting your feedback. Please stay tuned to email and social media, where we’ll keep you in the loop every step of the way.
Thanks and enjoy!
Julie Bombacino
PS – If you want to see our meals in action, this video shows me feeding my son AJ, our Chief Inspiration Officer, the quinoa, kale & hemp meal:
How to Tube Feed a Blenderized Meal
Using Real Food Blends meals is as easy as 1, 2, 3:
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1. Open the pouch.
2. Insert syringe and fill with the food.
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3. Connect syringe tip into the feeding tube and plunge!
It’s that simple! The gusset on the bottom of our pouches keep the pouch upright for less mess as you’re feeding. We recommend “Squirrel Syringes” – 60 cc O-ring syringes for easiest bolus feeding.
For those that are used to using formula and a pump or gravity bag, you will find that our meals are much thicker and need to be bolus fed with a syringe (we think the thickness is part of the reason that blended diets tend to ‘sit better’ in the stomach.) You are more than welcome to customize the meals by adding water, coconut water, milk / milk substitutes, bone broth or juice if you’d prefer a thinner blend. After opening one of our pouches, you’ll notice there’s room to add in a few ounces of your preferred liquid into the pouch – less mess & less dishes!
Transitioning to a Blenderized Diet by Feeding Tube
Transitioning to a Blenderized Diet by Feeding Tube
This is a special guest blog post by Lara Field, MS, RD, CSP, LDN
Over the past few years, many of the patients I work with that use feeding tubes are proactively asking me about real food via feeding tube (also known as a “blenderized diet”).
As a dietitian, I am happy to see the increased interest in whole foods, and even happier that a company like Real Food Blends exists to help make real food through the tube easier. They even made a Transition Guide to help guide you through the process.
When starting a blenderized diet, here are some thoughts to consider:
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A homemade blenderized diet requires a high-powered blender.
- Is the person with a feeding tube a good candidate for a real food diet? In that, does the digestive system function properly? Typically, only those with G-Tubes (not J-Tubes) are good candidates for a blenderized diet, as J-tubes bypass part of the small intestine required for absorption of many vitamins and minerals.
- Does the person with a feeding tube have any food allergies or intolerances? It is important to start slow, especially with younger children. If a child has never had whole foods before, I recommend introducing one food at a time over a few days to test for any reaction, just as you would with an infant. If the person has been on a 100% formula diet for quite some time, starting slow gives the body time to adjust to whole foods. For those that have eaten orally before, I usually recommend replacing one can of formula with one blenderized meal per day to start.
- Be mindful of hydration levels. Those on a 100% formula diet don’t typically need additional water considering it’s included in the formula. However, those on a blenderized diet or those using Real Food Blends meals often require additional water for proper hydration since the meals are more dense. I recommend administering a few ounces of water 20-30 minutes before and/or after a blended meal to maintain proper hydration.
- Finally, work with your registered dietitian to manage a blenderized diet. Keep track of everything you blend or Real Food Blends meals for a few weeks and monitor weight gain / loss, tolerance to feedings, bowel habits, and frequency of urination.
This is not medical advice. Always work with your medical team before making any dietary changes, especially if you have a feeding tube.
Interested in trying Real Food Blends meals for the first time? Our Trial Pack is a great start and includes one of each of our five meals!
“Thank you for giving my son a better quality of life! He went from vomiting 5-6+ times per day on formula, to none at all on RFB! I will recommend this product to everyone I know for tube feeds!” –Alissia Williams Allen
Lara Field is an accomplished Registered Dietitian and the founder of FEED (Forming Early Eating Decisions), a nutritional consultancy based in Chicago. Mrs. Field is an advisor to Real Food Blends and has extensive clinic and internship experience at top ranked institutions including Lurie Children’s Hospital, University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and Johns Hopkins.
REAL Change
We started Just Food Blends to change things for the better – to make it possible for tube-fed people to have access to real food meals and to make it easier for their caregivers to provide them with real food.
Just Food Blends will now be Real Food Blends. It’s a small change, but an important one. This change clearly demonstrates what we are all about: REAL. Real food. Real meals. Real connections. Real people.
Our meals – our company – are not JUST about food. Food is a cornerstone of how we bond with our loved ones, and come together with friends and family throughout our lives. It’s really not JUST about the food itself, but how the act and tradition of eating food together helps us create real memories and real connections with others. We hope to bring at least some of this real human and emotional connection back to eating for tube-fed people.
We truly believe everyone deserves access to real food and that a diet rich in a variety of real food is best. We also believe that our tube-fed loved ones can psychologically feel a little more ‘normal’ when eating real food, and caregivers can feel better giving them the same type of food they are eating. That just makes sense to us.
As we move forward with our first production run and start bringing these meals to the tube-fed world next month, we are excited to be Real Food Blends.
As always, thank you for your support!
Julie Bombacino
Founder & CEO, Real Food Blends
