Ok so my husband is a professional chef...I was a foods and nutrition major in college. I"m about 2 1/2 weeks post op and am doing great with the mushies..did fine with the liquid phase and am looking forward to the soft stage. We were thinking about starting a personal chef service to help post op bariatic patients with the 1st stages diet.

I have seen so many complain about the post op diet we have been making some great tasting meals we tought it may help some who struggle with ideas and taste.

So would you pay for someone to cook for you?

I think even longer term, I'd pay for home delivered meals.

We have a company called Lite n Easy here in Australia and of course, you guys probably have a zillion of them. Lite n Easy's foods are fresh, I mean, you get pieces of fruit with the delivery, cant get fresher than that. The dinners, hmmmm, you get a bit sick of frozen dinners, but they're really very good.

I'm not a dieter, dont believe in "dieting" for the main part, but Lite n Easy is the ONLY program I've ever had success with. I eat so well on that. I really would like to lose another 10lb or so and just cant seem to do it. My problem is its TOO MUCH food now! I just cant pay $125 a week for meals when I will throw half of it away, unable to eat it. And I can eat bread and cereals and such but i can imagine many bandsters just couldnt tolerate most of the food.

so if there were a bandster specific program I'd definitely be considering it!

Immediately post op, well my thoughts are that you eat hardly anything then and its really pretty easy to feed yourself liquids and mushies, I cooked a pot of dahl for example and got about 10 meals out of it! I personally wouldnt really have needed someone to cook for me during that period of time.

I am not yet banded, but I do see in many posts, confusion over what to eat, how much to eat, and boredom with eating post op. So I would definetly love to have someone cook all the right things for me!

Good luck with your venture!!!

I've ordered from a company that offered foods for banded people--the chef himself is banded. I like to cook, but thought it would be nice to have a few things in the freezer to grab quickly. I was disappointed, but think that it's something that could be a huge success if you offer

The one thing I didn't like was the one-size-fits-all approach. If I were doing this as a business, I would try to find a way to accommodate different doctor's plans. For example, I eat a low-carb diet---and my doctor doesn't have his patients do a prolonged liquid or mushy stage postop. I needed Protein foods from the outset (pureed for about 10 days, then regular). I needed low-carb choices. And my choices were very limited.

So, I would want to develop relationships with as many doctors as possible---learn what they recommend to their patients. And I'd want customers to feel free to make requests that fit into their plans.

I think LOCAL is important; I ordered from a company that assured delivery of frozen foods, but the FAA no longer allows dry ice to be used--so I got foods that were cool, at best. And refreezing did impair quality. So I'd want to stick local.

That's another place where developing relationships with doctors in the area becomes important. They can be an important source of referrals.

And of course, I'd want to provide SUPER high-quality foods.

And yes--I'd pay for good quality meals. Not routinely---but I'd keep some convenience foods on hand.