Food As Medicine for Heart Failure

We plan to conduct a single-center pilot trial to assess the tolerability, feasibility, and efficacy of providing medically-tailored meals to patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction and malnutrition. We hypothesize that a nutritionally complete meal plan, targeting 1.1-1.5 g/kg/day protein intake, will improve symptomatology, functional capacity, and serum biomarkers of heart failure in this patient population. We have two primary objectives for this pilot study: 1) confirm tolerability, feasibility, and efficacy of prescribing MTMs or oral protein supplementation and 2) measure changes in functional capacity, patient-reported health status, and biomarkers of nutritional status and heart failure over the course of the study period. For this proposed study, we will test the following elements of this central hypothesis with 2 aims: Aim 1 Tolerability, feasibility, and efficacy of prescribing medically-tailored meals or protein supplementation: Tolerability will be assessed with the validated 28-item dietary satisfaction score (DSat-28). Efficacy will be assessed by improvement in patient-reported health status questionnaires and feasibility will be assessed by the macronutrient intakes achieved on facilitated food recalls. Aim 2 Functional capacity and serum biomarkers of nutrition/heart failure: Determine whether medically tailored meals improve symptomatology, functional capacity, and serum biomarkers of nutrition and heart failure in patients with advanced heart failure.