At Sunshine Retirement Living communities, we believe that healthy, nourishing food doesn’t have to be boring. So our senior living communities provide a full culinary experience for our residents! Our culinary program not only nourishes your body, but your soul, with food that brings people together, elicits memories of home, and expands your horizons. Our talented chefs provide our residents with their classic favorites right alongside international cuisine and fusion recipes of their own.
Specialized dining services in each community are designed specifically to best meet the needs of its residents – our Independent Living communities offer healthy 24/7 dining for flexibility, while our Memory Care and Assisted Living communities offer meals designed to foster brain health. We can promise you this – all of our communities provide our senior residents with yummy, well-balanced meals!
When you move into one of Sunshine Retirement Living’s Independent Living communities, you can look forward to 24/7 dining, featuring delicious meals prepared with love by our master chef.
With an expanded menu available three times daily, you can join us morning, noon, and night in our restaurant-style dining rooms for a lively social affair with friendly neighbors. If you ever desire a more intimate space, our communities also feature a smaller private dining room that can be reserved for a special event or cozy meal with family and friends. Our fresh, daily-made salads and soups, quality meats, heart-healthy grains and lentils, as well as our variety of always-available gluten-free, vegetarian, or low-sodium options, ensure that there is a dish to please every palate. We love to incorporate locally-sourced produce into the menu, some of which is even grown in our own community gardens! We do all the cooking; you enjoy the good food and great company.
While we offer three scheduled meals daily, our 24/7 dining also gives you the flexibility to request food at any time – day or night. Menu item availability varies depending on the hour and is more limited during late hours, but we can provide you with a choice of hot and cold items that were prepared by our executive chef. It may be a gourmet sandwich and salad, or a protein and vegetable that can be quickly heated by the concierge or taken back to your room to heat yourself.
We’re constantly looking to expand our menu offerings and our master chef welcomes feedback and suggestions from everyone who dines with us. If you have a favorite recipe, feel free to share it – our chef will happily prepare it for the entire community to enjoy! If everyone likes it, your recipe might just become a staple dish.
At our Sunshine Independent Living communities, we only serve only the healthiest chef-prepared meals every day. Here’s an example of a day’s menu:
Below are sample menus (daily menus may vary):
See something you like? Contact your local Sunshine Community today and be our guest for a visit and a complimentary meal. You’re going to wish you had visited sooner!
We’ve all heard the old saying: you are what you eat. Turns out that statement not only applies to your heart, but to your memory and the health of your brain in general. At our Sunshine Retirement Living Memory Care and Assisted Living communities, we provide research-backed meals designed to promote brain health and ward off memory loss.
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have evidence that eating certain types of food and avoiding others may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by as much as 53 percent.
A plan they developed — appropriately called the MIND Diet — breaks down its recommendations into 10 brain-healthy food groups a person should eat and five “unhealthy food groups” to avoid. They tested their theory on more than 900 people between the ages of 58 and 98, who each filled out food questionnaires and underwent repeated neurological testing. The results of their study, which was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, revealed that participants whose diets most closely followed the MIND recommendations had a level of cognitive function the equivalent of a person 7.5 years younger.
At Sunshine Retirement Communities, our chefs constantly work to accommodate each resident’s various desires and dietary restrictions. At the same time, they incorporate foods from the MIND diet that foster brain health. Our goal is that the MIND diet, in conjunction with our many Memory Care programs, will help hold off memory issues for as long as possible.
Here is a quick summary of the 10 MIND Diet foods you will be seeing more of in our recipes:
Now, here are the five food groups you will be seeing less frequently on our menus to reduce your risk of developing memory challenges:
The researchers say that even “modest adherence” to the MIND Diet can measurably reduce a person’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease, and the longer you stick with it, the greater the benefits. Here at Sunshine, we hope our adherence will leave a good taste in your mouth and have a positive influence on many, many minds.
If you’re looking for retirement communities that stay up-to-date on research-backed ways to support their residents’ minds and bodies, then look no further than Sunshine Retirement Living! At our independent living communities, we accommodate our residents’ schedules with 24/7 dining, while also providing them with balanced meals to support their health. At our Memory Care and Assisted Living communities, we promote both brain health and overall wellbeing by following the guidance of the MIND Diet. No matter which community you or your loved one stay at, you can rest assured that you or they will be in good hands!
We invite you to join us for a meal to see what our dining experiences are all about. Stop in for breakfast, lunch, or dinner any day of the week at one of our 40 senior living communities across the country. You can call ahead, or just pop by. Our doors, and dining room, are always open!
