The aging process leads to impaired digestive function, cardiovascular system, urinary system, and so on, making the health and life of the elderly have many changes.
Therefore, it is necessary to have a reasonable diet that helps the elderly absorb nutrients, improve their health, and prevent old-age diseases.
The elderly often have reduced chewing ability, tooth loss, or grinding food by mouth inefficiently. Therefore, the pulverizing and pureeing of food will facilitate the elderly to absorb more easily.
Here are some tips on how to puree food for the elderly, let’s take a look with us on this guide here.
Meal planning for seniors
Eating many small meals reduces the pressure on the stomach and helps the digestive system work with more ease. Therefore, the elderly should regularly eat three main meals, alternating 2-to 3 smaller meals. Moreover, the space between meals should be equal and punctual.
You should also change the ingredients of each meal regularly for the elderly to be less boring, but still ensuring and balancing the nutrients in every meal.
Choose ingredients
- Grains and nuts: For the elderly, protein digestion and absorption are weak, so protein deficiency is easy to occur. Therefore, it is necessary to supplement protein for the elderly with cereals. We can use beans and cereals that can be either pureed in milk or cooked in a creamy soup.
- Vegetables and fruits: Fiber helps stimulate bowel movements, avoid constipation, so it is very necessary for the elderly’s meals. In particular, green fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins and minerals such as kiwifruit, grapefruit, grape apple, banana can make smoothies or juices.
Preliminary processing of cooking ingredients
For cereals, choose fresh seeds and remove damaged seeds carefully. For hard nuts and grains, simmer to soften before pureeing. If your machine can’t do this, you can try with our best blender for nut butter list.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are preferred. Take care of food safety by washing fruits and vegetables carefully, and cooking them thoroughly. To avoid poisoning or digestive disorders, you should also remove old or overripe fruits, even if stored in the refrigerator.
Before you puree food, check the softness and hardness of each type of fruit and vegetable. Carrots, for example, need to be stewed well before pureeing. Vegetables should also be boiled before grinding. These blenders for green smoothies can help you do this better.
Using blenders or food processor to puree the ingredients
This is the most important step that everyone needs to pay attention to. To puree foods and vegetables perfectly, select a suitable utensil. Traditionally, people would pulverize food by hand with a spoon. This will be quicker and less costly, but the food will not be pureed evenly and still have some large pieces. Besides, some hard ingredients will be difficult to crush this way.
Ideally, you should choose a food processor or a blender for better and more effective performance. When using these cooking utensils, you need to put the necessary ingredients in the pitcher and press the “on” button to start the machine. Then, depending on your needs, you can adjust the right speed to create the desired texture of the food.
If the mixture is too loose during pureeing, you can add a few more ingredients to thicken it. On the contrary, add a little liquid if the puree is too thick. When the mixture reaches the desired consistency, you can turn off the machine and put it in a bowl or glass to enjoy.
Having a blender or a food processor on hand will bring a lot of benefits to your cooking, especially for the seniors. As mentioned above, the elderly need to divide into several small meals during the day for easy absorption, so a puree blender will help you prepare food more quickly and easily.
Cleaning after use
Cleaning is very important to ensure safety for the next use. So after you finish blending, you should pour water to soak and use a soft cloth to clean the parts of the machine.
Wash the pitcher or jar under running water and rinse vigorously to wash off any remaining food. Avoid allowing food to stick for long as this will make cleaning the jar more difficult and not guarantee hygiene when cooking next time.
Here are some tips for making an ideal puree food for seniors. Hopefully, it will be helpful for you and help you take better care of your loved ones.