The BEST Meal Planning Software for Dietitians & Nutritionists
Confession: I wasn't always a fan of dietitians making meal plans. In fact, I would cringe when someone would ask me to give them a meal plan.
Maybe my attitude came from the frustration of people demanding that I just “tell them what to eat” when they found out that I was a dietitian or I hadn’t yet discovered the wonderful options we have these days for meal planning software.
I felt like providing a meal plan was short changing their opportunity to actually learn the nutrition strategies I wanted to teach.
But somewhere along the line, my viewpoint changed.
Fast forward to today, creating meal plans with the current (modern) software subscriptions is really fun, quick, and can be customized to meet your client’s medical nutrition needs, their taste preferences, their family situation, their cooking (or lack of cooking experience), and more.
There are SO many options for dietitians and nutritionists to use comprehensive software to create meal plans for their clients with ease AND generate revenue. This is a win-win: your clients have the guidance and structure that they’re seeking and you have just leveled up on the value your practice is providing.
In this blog post, I’ll walk you through some of my favorite options for meal planning software as well as provide some guidance on how you can use your software to leverage more income.
Let’s dive in!
What is menu planning software?
Meal planning software is software designed to help dietitians create custom meal plans for their clients based on dietary needs, medical conditions, taste preferences, and wellness goals...without taking all darn day.
Meal planning software helps dietitians plan meals in advance, track nutrient intake, suggest delicious recipes, and monitor progress. Depending on what program you choose, you may have the option to share or hide specific details based on your client’s needs.
Counseling about carb counting? You’ll want to display the carbs per serving in your recommended recipes.
Counseling people recovering from disordered eating? Those calorie levels need to go!
Meal planning software also allows dietitians to quickly generate meal plans that are tailored to the individual’s taste preferences and lifestyle goals, such as being a vegetarian or aiming to eat seasonal produce from your CSA farm.
Depending on the specific features of the menu plan, you may be able to generate grocery lists for your clients and chat with them through the app, and your clients may even be able to order their week’s groceries directly through the app.
How meal planning software can help clients and build your nutrition business
Meal planning software can be a game-changer for dietitians and nutritionists looking to grow their businesses. Clients benefit too! Here's how:
- Efficiency and Time-Saving: Manual meal planning can be time-consuming. By using software, dietitians can generate custom meal plans in minutes. This efficiency allows for more clients to be seen and serviced.
- Personalization: With meal planning software, dietitians can customize meal plans to fit individual client nutrition and situational needs, whether they're vegan, gluten-free, have specific allergy restrictions, and cooking capabilities.
- Professional Presentation: Offering a sleek, user-friendly digital meal plan enhances the professional brand of your nutrition business.
- Tracking and Monitoring: Some software options provide features that allow clients to track their food intake and monitor progress. This data can be invaluable for making necessary adjustments to their plans.
- Engagement and Retention: An interactive platform can enhance client engagement. If clients can easily access and interact with their meal plans, they're more likely to stick to them and stay with the dietitian long-term.
- Recipe Database: These platforms usually come with a vast array of recipes. This means dietitians don't have to start from scratch each time and can offer clients diverse and delicious food choices.
- Shopping Lists: Automatically generated grocery lists based on meal plans make the process seamless for clients, increasing their likelihood to adhere to the plan.
- Integration with Other Tools: Some software can integrate with other tools like fitness trackers, enhancing the overall service offering.
- Revenue Stream: Dietitians can opt for a subscription model, where clients pay a recurring fee for continuous access to the software and regular updates to their meal plans.
- Education & Resources: Platforms like Living Plate often have resources, articles, and guides that can serve as education materials for clients.
- Feedback and Adjustments: The interactive nature of digital platforms means clients can provide feedback easily, helping the dietitian adjust meal plans in real-time.
- Remote Service Capability: Especially relevant in today's digital age, having an online platform allows dietitians to cater to clients from various locations, not limiting them to their immediate vicinity.
- Marketing Potential: Offering a digital and interactive service can make marketing efforts more effective. It's a unique selling proposition that can be showcased in advertising efforts.
- Client Empowerment: Clients have the autonomy to swap meals, adjust portion sizes, or make other modifications, giving them a sense of control and ownership over their journey.
- Consistency and Standardization: For dietitians who work in larger practices or clinics, using software ensures that all clients get a standardized level of service.
- Updates & Trends: Software platforms are typically updated regularly. This means dietitians have access to the latest nutritional information, trends, and research.
By integrating meal planning software into a nutrition business, dietitians can enhance their service offering, improve client satisfaction, and potentially increase their revenue streams.
What is the best meal planning software?
It is pretty exciting how many options there are these days for meal-planning software. The flip side is that it might feel a tad overwhelming to pick the best software program when there are SO many choices.
The best one for you, your business, and your clients depends on a few criteria:
- Who is your target market and what are their needs?
- What features of the software will be most helpful to them?
- What is your budget?
Before you start perusing the different meal-planning software offerings aimed at dietitians, make a list of how you might want to use this software and what features would be most helpful for you. This will help you to better evaluate which option will work best for you.
Let’s explore a few options for meal-planning software that I know and love!
🍎 Living Plate Rx
Living Plate Rx is an incredibly robust software program that was founded by Jeanne Petrucci, MS, RDN. I feel like it is one of the gold standards for meal planning software! As a subscriber to Living Plate Rx, you not only get access to their meal planning software program and templates, but you also get access to a variety of tools and resources from their resource library, including “plate and hands” cooking videos to share with your audience, lesson plans, eBooks, blog post templates to personalize and social media suggestions. The program subscription is really robust.
They explain that their subscription service includes the following, according to their website:
- Evidence-based content - Launch competitive programs and offers using a constant flow of high-quality content you receive every month. Follow our evidence-based framework to educate and empower your clients. Includes culinary nutrition courses, meal plans, private practice materials, social media prompts, and done-for-you email marketing material (and sales funnels too).
- Meal plans - Done-for-you meal plans for most nutrition prescriptions — use ours or build your own in minutes.
- Community - Join thousands of your peers in a supportive online community that’s laser-focused on success — you may be on your own, but you’re never alone.
Living Plate Rx is integrated with Fullscript® online dispensary integration for recommending herbs and supplements to your individual clients.
Cost: Living Plate Rx membership is $89/month or $899 per year.
Check out Living Plate Rx* (this is my affiliate link, also use code oHmzY12K for 20% discount, see below for full description where I may make a commission when you use this link at no additional cost to you - actually you get a discount!)
Prep Dish
Prep Dish is the brainchild of powerhouse Allison Schaaf who is both a registered dietitian and chef. They offer four meal plans each week, all of which are gluten-free. They come with a grocery list so that shopping is easy.
The meal plans are not modifiable, so that may be a deal breaker.Dietitians can become affiliates for Prep Dish and recommend it to their clients; you’ll earn a 50% commission on each sale!
Cost: $3-6 per week.
Meal Garden
Meal Garden is a great choice for any dietitian wanting to set up a subscription to their meal plans. You can decide what to charge and have your menu service be a valuable component of your nutrition counseling service or it could be a separate revenue stream as people subscribe to get your dietitian-crafted meal plans.
Meal Garden is HIPPA secure, comes with a phone and computer app, and more than 7,000 recipes.
Cost: $30/month.
EatLove
EatLove is a software program that can be used by healthcare professionals, including registered dietitians, or by regular people to make plans for themselves.
You can use EatLove to craft plans to meet certain lifestyle goals (e.g., Whole30, vegetarian, muscle gain, or more veggies) or to support a specific health condition (e.g., diabetes, breastfeeding, celiac disease, or iron deficiency anemia).
Use EatLove on your desktop or on the app and find your meal plans, as well as restaurant recommendations and connect with your local grocery store, including Walmart, Instacart, and Amazon Fresh. EatLove has also partnered with Sunbasket, a meal delivery service.
EatLove is approved by the CDR as a CPE Accredited provider for dietitian continuing education.
Cost: Pricing is disclosed after a demonstration is scheduled; it is based on the number of clients you have on your roster.
That Clean Life
That Clean Life is a robust software program that allows you to add branding and tweak one of their many done-for-you specific plans (e.g., ADHD meal plan, plant-based menopause, gout, and more). TCL was co-founded by Abigail Keeso, registered nurse (RN), and has a registered dietitian and several amazing recipe developers and photographers on its team.
Their digital products are sleek, professional, and easy to add your own branding to. You can also upload your own favorite recipes and photos to add to your personal collection.
Cost: $60/month (or $600/year)
NutriAdmin
NutriAdmin is an online platform specifically for dietitians and nutritionist that provides functionality to:
- Automatically schedule appointments and visit reminders
- Send complex nutrition intake forms to clients with a click
- Store all your patient data in a secure and easy to manage way
- Create professional meal plans and recipes faster by leveraging templates
- Process payments online
Cost: starts at $29/month
Check out NutriAdmin
Overcoming YOUR objections
You may have your own ideas about meal planning for clients…I sure did. But I would encourage you to listen to the market. What are folks asking for?
As registered dietitians, we want to teach. When done well, meal plans can be the bridge between what your clients know now and what they can achieve in the future. Meal plans – when done well – aren't cop outs of “just tell me what to eat”.
If you make meal plans by hand, they can take SO much time. But with software programs, you can make custom, helpful meal plans with ease.
How to use meal planning software in your practice
There are a LOT of ways to integrate meal planning into your business. Try a few things and see what works best for you.
Individual meal plans
This is probably where most of us would get started, making a personalized plan for an individual client. These may take the most time (but a lot less time with the right software program).
Be sure not to sell yourself short if you offer this in your practice; this is a valuable service!
Opt-in for your email list
In general, you don’t need to work for free. But, a well-done meal plan might just be a valuable freebie to offer to new subscribers on your list. This gives potential clients a taste of your services and how you help your clients achieve their goals.
Chances are you’ll knock their socks off and then they’ll become paid clients!
Create a subscription program
What if you had income on autopilot?
That can happen if you integrate a subscription service into your business!
Some meal plans make it quite simple to integrate a subscription directly through their program; if you’re interested in having a subscription service in your business, make sure to pick a software program that will make this simple for you to do.
Meal prep
Meal plans could also provide guidance for your clients with a specific goal, such as preparing healthy meals to freeze for later. Dietitians working on pregnancy nutrition could provide really practical support for mothers to have nourishing, ready-to-go meals to have on hand once their little baby arrives.
That’s a wrap
Meal planning can feel overwhelming. But with your partnership, your clients can learn new skills, become competent with the management of their medical condition and work toward their unique goals.
And with the right software, this service comes without the expense of long hours into the night.
Aim for ease and find the right program to save you time and allow you to provide greater value to your clients…your bottom line will thank you, too!
PS: Ready to optimize your LinkedIn and Healthprofs profile to showcase your meal planning skills and expertise? I’ll show you how, right here.
Affiliate Links
Please note: This page contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase a product using my affiliate link, I will receive a small commission or bonus. This will in no way impact the price you pay. Affiliate links on this page are denoted with an asterisk (*).
