Elderly nutrition: cooking & meal preparation for the elderly

Meal options for older people

Cooking together 

The kitchen may well be the most dangerous room in the home. A study of 2000 Brits found that nearly half of all injuries that happened at home happened in the kitchen. Therefore if your loved one is keen to cook their own meals but is a little frail or forgetful, cooking together, and making small changes to the kitchen environment may be a good way forward. 

To make the cooking process safer and easier for your loved one, you may want to try the following – 

Make sure essential items are accessible 

If someone struggles to bend or is less steady on their feet it’s important to make sure the items they use most in the kitchen are stored within easy reach. For those with early stage dementia, it can also help to label drawers or have open storage at waist or eye level, to make it easier for them to find the utensils, pots, and pans they need by themselves. 

Make sure the lighting is right 

Making sure there is bright, but non-glowing lighting in the kitchen, especially above chopping areas and the stove can help avoid accidents and help a loved one read instructions and labels clearly. 

Replace some utensils with easier and safer  versions

For older people and those with mobility issues you can buy specialist utensils with stronger grips or easy-to-hold handles. These include things like a food chopper that uses a plunging action to dice vegetables, a grip toggle for wooden spoons and spatulas, and talking kitchen scales. 

Take care of the heavy lifting 

Safely lifting and draining a heavy pan of boiling vegetables takes a lot of strength, and if dropped can  cause serious injury and scalds. If cooking with a loved one you’ll likely want to step in and take on this task yourself. 

Keep an eye on expiry dates 

It’s sometimes easy to lose track of or forget what’s in the fridge. It’s good practice when cooking together to check expiration dates and throw away anything that’s no longer in date. Even if food is in date on the label, it’s worth looking for any signs of it starting to go bad, such as a change in colour, smell or texture.

If you’re batch cooking or saving leftovers for later, it can be a good idea to label the container with the date it was cooked too. 

Use meal kits

Meal kits are a great, low effort solution that still allows you to cook a meal from scratch. Kits generally contain between 3-5 meals a week, with each meal having a clear step by step recipe. Ingredients are usually pre-portioned,  and sometimes already prepared to – which can help avoid food waste and means your loved one doesn’t need to worry about dicing and chopping. The kits are usually delivered directly to your door, and you can choose which meals you want on a weekly basis. There’s loads of companies, for example HelloFresh, that can cater to different dietary needs too, such as vegetarian, gluten free, and protein rich. 

Set timers 

However, if you have something in the oven, getting your loved one use to setting timers will help them remember when it’s time to take food out. 

It’s often not safe to leave a boiling pot on the stove unattended, you can also avoid accidents accidents and spillages by removing utensils from pans while cooking and turning pan handles inwards are to prevent them from being knocked over.