Watch now: How this business is bringing healthy choices to Decatur tables | Food and Cooking

“Everything is fully prepared,” the owner said about the lunches. “All that person has to do is pop it in the microwave and it’s done.”

Healthy options are important to the Namken Nutrition menu, such as sweet potatoes, gluten free flours, chia seeds and fresh vegetables, but smoked meats often make it on the menu. With no freezers, the ingredients have to be fresh. “And we don’t usually do anything out of a can,” Namken said.

The list of ingredients is minimal, Namken said. “When you look at the back of a food label and you see 45 ingredients, a lot of that is processed,” she said.

As a registered dietician for 14 years, Namken taught a food lab at Eastern Illinois University. She moved to Decatur with her husband, then started their family, working part-time. After her husband’s career changes, Namken felt she needed to return to work full time. “We quickly realized that it was hard for us to eat healthy, because we were so busy,” she said.

Namken began meal prepping on the weekends for the family. Sundays were spent making lunches for the entire week. “So that we could just grab a meal, take it with us during the day, and know that we were eating a healthy option,” she said.

With encouragement from clients and co-workers, she began to seriously consider a business to help others with their meal choices too. “It started the thought process,” she said. “I do love it.”