Connecting healthy food to a healthier you

Seattle Sutton creates packaged meals based on guidelines, nutrition, proper portions

Story by Brandon LaChance

Seattle Sutton Healthy Eating runs and operates on many values and principles. Its mission is to create fresh and healthy food to support the most important thing in life – good health.

Seattle Sutton, the company’s originator in 1985 who ran it until she sold SSHE to Rene and Michael Ficek in 2018, summed it up in her book – The Seattle Sutton Solution: No Gimmicks – with this quote: “A person’s greatest asset is not a house, a car, or money in the bank. It’s good health. And to keep it, we must make smart choices. If we smoke; we can stop. If we ride in a car; we should wear a seat belt. If we lift a fork to our mouth; it should be hosting healthy food.”

The Ficeks have continued to design Seattle Sutton fresh-packaged meals around Sutton’s ideology.

“I think sometimes we are not taught at a young age that food is the No. 1 key to being healthy. The way that we eat as Americans, it isn’t something that is ingrained in us,” said Rene, who worked for Sutton as a licensed dietitian and nutritionist before purchasing the company. “A lot of people are on their own health journey, but at some point, you realize the importance of eating healthy and how it impacts your daily mood, your ability to move and exercise, and generally how you feel.”

“Sometimes people come to it early in life, and sometimes they don’t realize the importance of eating healthy until the first time they hear they have high cholesterol, they’re struggling with high blood pressure, or they’ve gained weight and they don’t know how to take it off,” she said.

“We’re here for people at every stage. It’s not that we focus on certain groups. I feed Seattle Sutton meals to my kids because it doesn’t have special ingredients, it’s not diet food, or specialty items that only we can get. It’s just freshly prepared meals cooked in a way that tastes good and is healthy,” she said.

The meals can be ordered in different ways. There isn’t a contract forcing you to stick with the program for six months, a year, or more. Instead, the client is able to tailor the meals around their schedule and finances.

The full program consists of 21 meals a week for five weeks (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), which includes 105 different meals to avoid any repeat items for the entire five-week menu cycle. There are three different calorie packages ranging from 1,200, 1,500, and 2,000 calories.

On Monday, a client picks up four days’ worth of meals, and on Thursday, they pick up three days’ worth of food – unless the client wants only meals during the week (Monday pick-up) or through the weekend (Thursday pick-up).

Seattle Sutton packages can be delivered to your door or picked up at one of the five locations: Ottawa (the SSHE headquarters), YMCAs in Peru, Mendota, and Streator, and the

Princeton Metro Center.

“A comment that we get very often from new customers is about portion control. They ask, ‘What is a proper portion?’ Even people who we perceive as healthy ask,” said Ray Anderes, who is Rene’s father, the former owner of Uptown Grill in La Salle, and the CEO of Seattle Sutton. “It’s a great thing. They may only be with us for two or three weeks, and then they’re done with Seattle Sutton meals, but they learned portion control.”

“The realization that you can live and feel comfortable on 1,200 calories or 2,000 calories is an eye opener. We have a list of 40 ingredients or items that cannot be in any of our products. That eliminates a vast majority of the commercially available food products,” he said.

Part of maintaining the healthy food mantra of the company is checking the eliminated ingredient list (which includes artificial colors, artificial flavors, sweet- eners, high glucose corn syrup, and MSG among others), making sure to include fruits and vegetables, and following guidelines by medical associations.

“There isn’t brand new science out there that is conflicting with what was out there 20-30 years ago,” Rene said. “The message on healthy eating hasn’t changed all that much, although in this day and age, you would think there is some special new diet and some special new breakthrough every week. But that’s not really how it works.”

“Fresh fruits and vegetables are definitely our differentiator as to what makes us different now and what has made us different for 37 years. There are certainly a lot of meal plans out there. The vast majority of them are frozen meals. When you’re freezing meals and not eating them fresh, a lot of nutrition is lost. It is certainly something that helps

FROM PAGE 11 us follow the guidelines that we follow, which are the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” she said.

Rene added that the foods customers will see more in meals because of the company’s values and guidelines are lean proteins, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables. With the help of foods we should eat and the elimination of foods we shouldn’t eat, SSHE is designed for everyone.

“There is a lot of misinformation out there. The internet has made it really easy for people to find the wrong answer or to come to a misconception about what they should or should not be eating or how to be healthier,” said Dan Rosier, SSHE director of marketing. “It really is far simpler than people make it out to be. If you want to be healthy and follow the simple guidelines of how food is made, what food is doing, getting the right balance of different ingredients and calories, you don’t need a fad or anything fancy like powders, shakes, or a fad diet.”

“You can follow a proper diet whether you do it yourself or let us do it for you. We find people who say, ‘I have this (medical ailment) and I don’t understand how your plan will help me.’ Our plan isn’t designed for a specific personal issue. It’s designed to help everyone as a whole. It addresses being healthy,” he said.

Michael Ficek knew what his family was getting into when they purchased the company. He knew his wife enjoyed what she was doing and was good at it. He knew the food was substantial and beneficial to all clients. He knew it was a challenge; one beneficial to him and the staff as they help to improve each customer’s health. Improving health, in the words of Seattle Sutton, means improving life.

“Seattle always summed it up by saying, ‘It’s what you should be eating for the rest of your life.’ That’s almost it in a nut- shell,” Michael Ficek said. “She could have said it’s how you should be eating for the rest of your life. It’s not magic. It’s specifically following a proper diet. It’s proper nutrition and proper portions. It works for everyone because that is how you’re supposed to eat.”

“It’s a challenge for us because it’s much easier to do it the way that everybody else does it. Shipping frozen food and getting it to people is simple because there is a longer shelf life. It’s much harder with the fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and keeping the nutrition value at its premium, but it’s more beneficial,” he said.

“These meals eliminate all of the thinking, the prep, the cook, and the cleaning. It’s a no-brainer if you want to do it. We have a number of success stories where they say they couldn’t walk around the block, and now they’re running half and full marathons. They’re still using Seattle Sutton,” he said. “It’s just healthy eating and what it does to your body and how it makes you feel.”