Fresh Start Healing Diet

Some of our guests have food allergies, Sensitivities, Texture Issues, and Major Food Dislikes. We aim to accommodate your unique dietary needs whenever possible. However, it presents a significant challenge for us, as it requires extensive individual meal planning and a substantial increase in kitchen team staffing.

Due to this, we kindly request that all guests with food allergies or sensitivities disclose them before registration, so that we can assess what we can do to accommodate them. Meal customizations are offered at an additional fee, which helps us to cover the extra staff hours required.

Dairy, gluten, meat, fish and other seafood, sugar, and eggs free. These foods are not included in our meals.

Additionally, if you need to change your portion size (for example, decrease or increase by 25% or 50%), we will adjust without additional charge.

Many of our ingredients are in the category of minor customization, including:

• Many types of fruit, veggies and greens
• Rare types of nuts (pine nuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts)
• Most seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, hemp, sesame, poppy seed)
• Legumes (beans, peas)
• Gluten-free grains (quinoa, gluten-free oats, wild and brown rice, amaranth, buckwheat, millet)

Minor Meal customization fee per week: $0-75. The amount varies depending on the number of minor ingredients, their frequency of occurrence, and the complexity of customization. If too many minor ingredients or several more common ones need to be customized, they may fall into the moderate to advanced category. If the ingredient(s) requiring customization are rare in our dishes, we will reduce or waive the fee.

These customizations include ingredients that are frequently in our meals.

Moderate Meal customization fee per week:  $75 per 1 item; $125-150 for 2 items; $150 for substituting one of the following food categories: all soy, all green leafy vegetables, grains or legumes.

Because of the vegan, raw nature of our meals, nuts are a staple in our diet. Due to this, nut allergy requires advanced customization. Elimination of all sweeteners and fruit, as well as nightshades, is another major one.

Major Meal customization fee per week:  almonds $175, cashews $250, cashews/ almonds $300; fructose/glucose/all sweeteners $250, nightshades $250, all nuts $350.

The customization fee to be discussed, based on the extent.

Some complex diet requests and staple items, such as olive oil and lemons, are non-customizable. We cannot accommodate Rotation, Celiac, Salt-Free and Food-Smell Allergies.

You are welcome to come at your own risk and must bring an EpiPen (we do not have one on-site). While we do our best, we cannot guarantee that no mistakes or mix-ups of plates will ever happen. By choosing to come, you release us from liability.

Please keep in mind that custom meals, due to not being standardized, may lack flavour or balance.

When the meal customizations are too extensive, or we have too many guests with allergies, we may not be able to accommodate all requests or ask you to book for future programs.

NOTE: If your digestive system cannot handle a lot of foods and need a lot of work, please check out our Physical or Emotional GoDeeper Programs. These programs’ focus is health restoration, and we may be able to accommodate slightly more.

This is our WORST nightmare :) We spend hours planning custom meals, and if, upon arrival, we discover a new allergy, we need to start the process all over again. This is why we appreciate you taking the time to study this page and prepare a list of what you cannot provide at registration time.

However, we understand that in some circumstances, it still may happen. For those cases, we created a “custom protocol/ custom meal incidental budget” included in your program. If you need to add customization of additional ingredients upon arrival, the customization will be charged against that budget. If your customizations exceed the budget (for example, if you continue to add new or change ingredients that require customization), we’ll discuss with you an additional charge.

Some people get upset about the fact that we charge for meal customizations. They say, “All restaurants I go to do it for free. Here, I pay so much money and should not have to pay extra for accommodation of my allergies, dislikes and texture issues.”

However, before you go that route, please consider the following facts:

1. As a health retreat, we attract many more people with moderate to severe allergies than other places.
2. The meals are gourmet, include a large variety of ingredients and are made totally from scratch. They take up to 4 times longer to make than a typical fast-food restaurant meal.
3. In restaurants, they prepare the same meals every day. At Fresh Start, every day and every meal is different (or you’d be bored and tired by the end of 21 days). Such a variety of meals requires more advanced custom meal planning (advanced meal customization may take 3-17 hrs. of planning alone, never mind prep time and extra dishes).
4. In restaurants, they have assembly lines, where ingredients are precut and can be easily manipulated. We prepare fresh ingredients daily, and they differ.
5. Due to the uniqueness of our menu and the high number of allergies, the preparation of our meals requires a higher calibre and training of chefs.
6. Meal customization doubles the number of chefs required.
7. The team needs to be aware of your allergies for the duration of your entire stay, not just for one meal. If someone is allergic to tomatoes, someone else is allergic to soy, and still another person dislikes beets, and yet another cannot tolerate cilantro, there are five menus to follow in addition to the main one.
8. In addition to meals, we need to consider your supplements and juices to ensure they are also customized.
9. “Newly discovered” allergy or meal customization request arriving in the middle of the program after everyone is trained and knows what they are doing requires us to start the planning all over. Since there is no ready-made allergy planning software, the process is highly manual.
10. Undisclosed or unknown before arrival allergies and unpredictable, fussy eaters can contribute to our kitchen team’s grey hair.

Guys, we are talking about real life here… This is why we ask you to disclose all allergies, dislikes and other issues before arrival and to be understanding of our limitations and the fees we charge. Those fees typically do not cover all the time we invest, but they help a lot.

Please review the sample meal pictures to ensure you can eat them. There is nothing worse than coming for a program and not being able to eat most of the foods we offer, and then exploding on day 4 or 5, or having to send a staff member to a grocery store to buy Cheerios to help someone in severe distress from not eating conventional foods. It happened; that’s why you are reading it.

We want to ensure that you clearly understand what foods we offer and that you enjoy them (or at least are willing to eat them). Our meals are super tasty and prepared with a lot of love, but, like everything, we cannot meet everyone’s tastes and standards. If you dislike vegetables and salads, struggle to eat healthy foods, or have trouble eating raw foods, this program may not be suitable for you.

The food we offer is healing and cleansing, and is designed to help you improve your health and wellbeing. If you are willing to go vegan for 5-9 days and are eager to try our delicious and healthy creations, that’s what truly matters. Being open-minded and ready to try new things is everything! We hope you enjoy our unique diet, which thousands of our guests have loved, and that you will take away many ideas and recipes with you.