deliberately put a digital strategy in place, and that digital strategy brought our Facebook likes from 88,000 to over 700,000 today. It brought our silversneakers.com from 500,000 members in the database to 3 million. We’ve learned a lot about what the members want. Next slide.
But we also learned from the market research that we did, was that movement, physical activity is a very important arm to keeping a population healthy. But we also learned that the mindset, that one of the benefits of SilverSneakers, by the way, is not so much that as a physical activity. There’s also a social connection.
One of our oldest members, 104 years old, she started the program at 89. I guarantee you, she was not bench pressing 150 pounds. She was there for social connections, and that’s one of the benefits that we bring to our population. Next slide.
This social isolation by default, it has been a benefit for the company. There are a lot of our members who go to their physical fitness not necessarily to work out, but they go because they connect with people. One of the biggest complaints I get from the fitness centers is that they serve too much coffee. When I walk in — and I have met now with nearly 10,000 members. When I walk in, there are some members that are just in a community room. And so this holistic approach is one of the elements that SilverSneakers is known for.
The last, next slide, what we also learned was that much of that population are nutritionally deprived. Much of that population — and I’ll share with you personally, 27 years ago, I lost my parents 6 months apart from each other. My mom, after my dad died, lost 40 pounds within 6 months. I would pay Nutrisystem $1,000 a month to deliver food to my mom. And as I traveled and met with so many different members, their caregivers said the same thing, “Why don’t you have a nutritional program that we can subscribe to so I have confidence that my mom and dad are receiving food?” And so next slide, these 2 are connected in a way that we believe we will be one of the first companies to do what others claim that they do, and that is to manage calories in and manage calories out. Next slide.
I can give you tons of market data, but I’m not going to run through these slides word by word. But here is Bruce Broussard on the day of the acquisition. Bruce sent me an email, and his whine right over here, “It is also why we believe that a program that combines nutrition with physical fitness can go a long way toward helping people achieve their best health.”
Next slide. It’s also supported by other comments, and you see right here home-delivered meals improve health. They keep seniors out of nursing homes, and it lowers health care costs. We are taking a holistic approach in terms of how we manage the members. Next slide.
And so I am pleased we spent a lot of time looking at a variety of companies in the nutritional vertical, and I have to tell you this was not just one company. We spent all of 2018 meeting with different leaders and looking at different companies. I am pleased that we selected Nutrisystem. The leadership, the cultural alignment, their commitment to excellence, their performance is second to none. And I’m pleased to introduce my partner, Dawn Zier. Dawn?
Dawn M. Zier
Thank you, Donato. Good evening, everybody. So I first would just like to briefly start out about what excited me when Donato talked to me several months ago. First off, what excited me was the holistic approach to weight loss and the ongoing journey to optimal health that the combined companies would be able to achieve through fitness, nutrition and social connection.
Second was the expanded channels of distribution, which were complementary. They’re different, but what we do isdirect-to-consumer marketing. What — Tivity Health has access to all the health plans and also 16,000 gyms, so it gives us a way to really address consumers in a different way that we’ve been able to as a single company.
And third, which Donato’s going to go over later, are the significant revenue synergies that the combined company brings to the table. So that’s what excited me and got my whole entire team really looking forward to doing this and thinking that this was meaningful. Each company independently successful, together stronger. Next slide please.