Diabetic Friendly Meals –
a health intervention
Specially crafted meals for people with chronic medical conditions who are struggling right now
To create a healthier future for all people in Australia, FareShare is developing a range of medically tailored meals to meet the nutritional demands of people with chronic medical conditions who are also struggling at the moment.
Currently, the food relief sector does not tailor foods to meet the individual recipient’s nutritional and medical needs. By filling this important gap, FareShare’s Diabetic Friendly Meals aim to improve health outcomes, relieve stress on individuals and within families, and lower healthcare costs.
Why are medically tailored meals important?
Australia is facing a deepening crisis: poor quality diets are causing and exacerbating chronic conditions. Suboptimal diet, for instance, causes more heart disease deaths than smoking and physical inactivity combined1.
Studies2 show that access to nutritious, medically tailored meals greatly improves health outcomes, lowers healthcare costs, improves the quality of patient care, and relieves stress on the individual and within families.
While every person at risk of, or with, chronic diseases is recommended to eat healthier diets, this can prove very difficult, especially during periods of vulnerability.
The current approach to food insecurity does not tailor food to support the recipients’ nutritional and medical needs, nor does it leverage the healthcare sector’s interest and immense resources in maximising the nutritional content of food for health and wellbeing.
How can FareShare help?
Prepared to strict standards and in guidance with dietitians, our Diabetic Friendly Meal Health Intervention program will tailor FareShare’s homestyle, cooked meals to meet the nutritional needs of an individual’s specific needs along with nutrition counselling and home delivery.
Combining our desire to address this significant equity issue in our community with our existing infrastructure and networks, FareShare is ideally suited to pioneer this program…
It’s at the heart of what we do:
FareShare’s vision is that ‘everyone has access to a nutritious meal every day’. This includes anyone who is food insecure and who may be suffering from long-term health conditions.
Naturally, we are determined to address this need and influence better health and wellbeing outcomes for people in our community.
FareShare’s MTM program follows other innovative FareShare programs. One example is our First Nations program. We have seamlessly incorporated tailored, culturally appropriate Meals for the Mob into our cooking operations; in three years, this program has already delivered more than 300,000 meals to First Nations communities.
We have the infrastructure to make these meals a reality:
FareShare operates the two largest charity kitchens in Australia – in Melbourne and Brisbane. Each year, we cook millions of nutritious meals that are given, free of charge, to people experiencing hardship.
These facilities allow our experienced chefs to collaborate seamlessly, develop recipes, cook at scale in a HACCP-certified commercial facility, harness our extraordinary volunteer base, and utilise our existing networks to help make this MTM program a reality.
Our massive modern kitchens also give us the ability to scale up as we look to respond to a range of chronic diet-related health issues in vulnerable communities nationally.
How FareShare’s Medically Tailored Meals program is progressing
In 2023, FareShare partnered with The George Institute of Global Health (TGI) to trial a food centred, community-led health initiative known as the FareShare Diabetes Friendly Meals Health Intervention Pilot Program.
In 2024, drawing inspiration from successful Food is Medicine programs overseas, FareShare and GIGH developed a comprehensive project plan for an Australian-first pilot.
This health intervention pilot will be tailored for people with type 2 diabetes, a highly prevalent condition that is increasing, especially in vulnerable groups, and which offers quantitative data to help us effectively evaluate the program. The data will help us refine the service model and provide the evidence needed to continue with larger trials.
Having built strong partnerships with healthcare partners, community organisations, and other key stakeholders, we are now well underway with the design of the program, with the intention of conducting the study later in 2025.
The FareShare chefs working on this exciting project have analysed the nutritional profile of FareShare meals and are developing and testing a wonderful selection of around 40 master recipes in the Abbotsford kitchen.
To ensure these meals meet strict standards for people living with type 2 diabetes, each ingredient is measured precisely, its nutritional content logged in computer software. Then there’s the taste test of course, as recipes are constantly optimised to deliver delicious flavour.
FareShare is the first international organisation to be accepted into the Food Is Medicine Coalition Accelerator, a targeted program assisting charities to set up their own medically tailored meal health intervention programs. Three members of the team, Daniel Moorfield, Fiona Maxwell, and Tania Visentini, travelled to America – thanks to the generous funding of an anonymous donor – in early 2025 to participate in the Accelerator Onsite.
Throughout 2025, FareShare looks forward to applying these learnings and paving the way towards better health for all Australians, by finalising dozens of tailored recipes, and working with people living with type 2 diabetes.
What next for our Medically Tailored Meals Health Intervention program
Our vision extends beyond pilot programs and clinical trials. We see this initiative as a springboard for systemic change, a catalyst for shifting healthcare towards a more holistic, preventive model.
By expanding the types of meals we can offer people with long-term medical conditions, and scaling our program through partnerships with healthcare providers and community organisations nationally, we can create a healthier future for all Australians.
Because this program isn’t just about providing meals. It’s about empowering individuals to take control of their health. It’s about showing that change is possible. It’s about building a future, together, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
In essence, this project is about hope.
We’ll update this page with the latest developments, as well as in and on our social media channels; follow us on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
References
- Global Burden of Disease Study: Data Visualization. https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/ (accessed February, 2024).
- Darmon N, Drewnowski A. Contribution of food prices and diet cost to socioeconomic disparities in diet quality and health: a systematic review and analysis. Nutr Rev 2015; 73(10): 643-60.
- Backholer K, Spencer E, Gearon E, et al. The association between socio-economic position and diet quality in Australian adults. 2016; 19(3): 477-85.
- Choi YJ, Crimmins EM, Ailshire JA. Food insecurity, food environments, and disparities in diet quality and obesity in a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling older Americans. Prev Med Rep 2022; 101912.
- Lindberg R, McNaughton SA, Abbott G, Pollard CM, Yaroch AL, Livingstone KM. The Diet Quality of Food-Insecure Australian Adults-A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Analysis. Nutrients 2022; (19).