Nutrition is important for everyone. But as you get older, making and eating nutritious meals can become a real challenge. Luckily, there are a few things that can be done to make this easier for yourself as an elderly person or to assist your elderly loved ones in your life.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three ways to make cooking easier for the elderly.
Put A Meal Plan In Place
If you’re still living at home and cooking for yourself rather than living in an assisted living community and having your meals prepared for you, one of the easiest ways to ensure that you’re eating healthy food is to have a meal plan that you follow. If you don’t have a plan in place, it becomes much easier to rely on food that isn’t healthy or good for you.
To help you in making your meal plan, try to think about foods that your elderly loved one wants to eat. If some of the things they like eating aren’t as healthy as they should be, you can slowly help them to make healthier changes that taste good but maybe have more of what their bodies need. And then, when it comes time for shopping and cooking, having a plan in place for what to make for each meal will make both of these tasks much easier to accomplish, as all the thought has already been put in.
Get Groceries Delivered
When your elderly loved one is ready to go grocery shopping and get what they need to eat for the next few days, actually going out of the house can be intimidating. Especially if they are dealing with mobility issues or are worried about getting sick while out of the house, you’ll be glad to know that there are other options for getting their groceries.
Depending on where your loved one lives, they likely can get their groceries delivered to them as opposed to having to go shopping themselves. While they might need you to help them navigate the website for whatever grocery store they’re shopping at, once they’ve got this figured out, this could be a much better way to get their groceries when they need them.
Use Adjusted Kitchen Tools For Cooking
For cooking their meals at home, many elderly people can and should be using adjusted kitchen tools that can make cooking much easier and safer for them to complete.
Things like a grip turner, boil over lid, cut-resistant gloves, vegetable chopper, oven rack guards, and more can all take away a lot of the physical dangers that elderly people might experience as part of cooking. And, if you introduce them to things like a slow cooker, pressure cooker, and other cooking devices, you can help them see that healthy cooking doesn’t have to be challenging.
If you are wanting yourself or your elderly loved one to have an easier time cooking and eating healthy food, consider using the tips mentioned above to see how this can be accomplished.
Originally posted on February 4, 2022 @ 7:59 am