Ensuring care home residents are well nourished
30 Nov, 2011
With the CQC reporting that one in seven care homes is failing to give the elderly enough food and water, Lee Sheppard, Divisional Manager Care Homes for apetito, looks at how to ensure care home residents are sufficiently nourished.
“The Care Quality Commission’s damning report is a stark reminder that many of Britain’s care homes are still struggling to get to grips with a basic, yet essential, element of care.
As well as being one of life’s simple pleasures, food really can be the best medicine and the benefits of a healthy intake of food – especially for the elderly and vulnerable – are well documented.
However, while it may sound obvious to say that care homes need to make sure they are offering residents a balanced, nutritional diet that is tailored to an individual’s needs and tastes, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Take into consideration special dietary requirements such as gluten free, low salt or low fat, medical conditions such as dysphagia, which makes swallowing difficult, and put that alongside cultural diversity not to mention a wide range of personal likes and dislikes, whilst all the time needing to adhere to tightening budgets, and the catering operation can, in fact, become very complex.
This is the reason apetito has developed a range of more than 200 dishes generating menus that all meet NACC standards and allow care homes to provide an interesting and varied menu for all diets.
For example, our world-leading soft and puréed range for those with dysphagia has been created to retain both the taste and appearance of a normal meal so that residents are sure to enjoy their selection with both their taste buds and their eyes, while taking in a nutrient and calorie-dense meal. The introduction of this range has lead to reports of weight gain by up to 20 per cent from to some of the 120 care homes we work with.
While guaranteeing to save money on their catering provision, apetito’s specialist team further eases the burden on care home operators by providing them with their own dedicated consultant. Offering advice on all aspects of their catering services, from nutritional guidelines to catering for special diets and protected mealtimes, our consultants are there to help homes ensure that each resident receives a truly world-class service."
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