Managing Your Diet

Many people living with kidney disease feel that the renal diet is the most difficult part of treatment. Managing a renal diet can be challenging for a number of reasons:

  • There is no standard “kidney diet” – it’s complicated and it changes over time depending on kidney function;
  • Many people need to balance two or more diets such as a diabetic diet and/or a heart health diet along with a renal diet and they can often disagree;
  • The diet can be really limited, especially if you have food allergies, intolerances and/or restrictions; and,
  • Many of the guidelines and suggestions for healthy eating no longer apply when you’re following a renal diet and you may need to avoid some fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The renal diet can also have a big impact on your quality of life and your social activities:

  • Grocery shopping, label reading, and preparing renal friendly meals can seem like a full time job;
  • It can be difficult to eat out, and still control your sodium, potassium, phosphorous and protein intake;
  • Friends and family may not know or understand what you can eat; and,
  • You may miss some of your favorite foods and feel left out of holiday meal traditions and celebrations.

The Kidney Foundation of Canada has created the Kidney Community Kitchen to help address these challenges. This site is a celebration of food for people living with kidney disease – in addition to kidney friendly recipes and meal plans, we’ve created information and fact sheets to help you manage your diet. This section of the web site will continue to expand as we get requests for information so please let us know if there’s anything you would like us to add in the future.

Tips & Fact Sheets

Connect with the Community

Meal Planner

The Menu Planner allows users to create daily and weekly plans. While you don’t need an account to use the meal planner, you won’t be able to print or save your plans without one. It’s simple to request an account here.  

Subscribe to the Kidney Community Kitchen e-News

Each quarter we’ll send you The Kidney Kitchen e-News, highlighting diet and nutrition information and seasonal recipes to help you stick with your renal diet. We use MailChimp to deliver our e-News

Videos

Connect with our new Video Resource page for Renal Cooking Demonstrations and Informational Webinars