Menus are a helpful tool for learning about what to eat on a kidney diet. Sometimes planning meals is the most difficult step in making diet changes. With pre-planned menus it’s easy to create a grocery list, do a little shopping, then start cooking kidney friendly meals.

A couple of drawback are that menus don’t take into consideration what a person likes or dislikes. Pre-planned menus aren’t designed for an individual’s specific diet, so may not have the amount of protein, calories or minerals that matches a person’s dietary needs.

Here are a couple of resources I have discovered for some pre-planned kidney-friendly menus for a dialysis diet.

Check out DaVita.com’s regional menus–each includes information about traveling to different areas, foods that are produced or served in the region, recipes for some regional favorites and a one day menu.
http://www.davita.com/diet-and-nutrition/c/regional-menus

Another place to find dialysis diet menus is at
http://www.kidneyschool.org/splash/toc.shtml

Kidney school provides 15 modules on kidney disease. One module is on nutrition and it includes 2 weeks of pre-planned menus for hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis diets. Modifications for diabetes or non-diabetes are also included.

A third resource for pre-planned menus is to ask your dietitian to provide menus based on your meal plan. 

After finding pre-planned menus it’s a good idea to ask the dietitian to look over them so they can help individualize the meals to match personal dietary needs. 

       Hang on—help is on the way!

DaVita.com is creating an online meal planner called the DaVita Diet Helper. It provides kidney-friendly meals and snacks based on the diet entered. Users create their own weekly menu based on the meals and recipes they choose. They can even print a shopping list and save favorite meals and previous menus.

If you want to be notified when it’s up and ready to use, you can go the the DaVita.com home page and click on a link to sign up.

Look for the DaVita Diet Helper banner.

Some calorie boosters include: 

butter mints
cranberry juice
cranberry sauce
frosting
fruit roll-ups
hard candy
honey
jam or jelly
jelly beans
marshmallows
pancake syrup
regular soda pop
sugar
sweetened fruit drinks
cream cheese
margarine or butter
mayonnaise
oil (canola, oilve, vegetable)
sour cream
whipped topping

Generally, peritoneal dialysis patients begin with a fluid restriction of 64 ounces or 2000 ml (2 liters) each day. This amount is then adjusted up or down based on how much fluid is removed during the peritoneal dialysis treatments or exchanges. Residual kidney function (residual renal function) also helps determine the fluid restriction. Read more…