Last month, in honor of ALS Awareness Month, Real Food Blends gave away 600 meals to 100 PALS (that’s Patients with ALS.) We wanted to give them a chance to experience Real Food Blends and get their feedback on how the meals worked (or didn’t!) for them.

Augie Nieto of Augie’s Quest is a Real Food Blends fan!

For many years now, people who are 100% formula fed who add some real food into their tube-feeding program have been reporting positive changes, both to the way their body is functioning and how they feel about tube-feeding.   Our meals are simply an easier way to access these benefits so we’re not really surprised by the results.

This was a very small, unscientific survey, but we asked each of our ‘taste’ testers to answer a couple of questions about their experience using Real Food Blends after one month. Most simply added in 1 Real Food Blends meal per day, replacing a can of formula for a few weeks:

• 60% reported a marked improvement in bowel habits
• 20% reported a noticeable improvement in volume tolerated (they could take more at one time, meaning they wouldn’t need to be fed as often.)
• Every respondent said they wanted to continue using Real Food Blends.
• 100% said that they “felt better about” having a Real Food Blends meal vs. a typical formula feed
• 100% said they would recommend Real Food Blends to others with ALS and a feeding tube.

We especially love those last two. There is such a psychological boon to giving someone a real meal….just like offering baked goods to visitors at your home!  This is a concept that is rarely talked about in the medical field when discussing tube feeding but is very important, both for the person with a feeding tube and their loved ones.  For those with ALS, we hope that having real food readily available provides not only much-needed nutrition, but also a bit of happiness.