Good nutrition knows no age. Here’s how to ensure healthier senior diets for your loved one.
Source
As you age, your body doesn’t require as many calories as it used to. But that doesn’t mean that good nutrition should fall by the wayside. Your senior loved one still needs fruits and vegetables every day. Good senior nutrition can help their immune system, give them energy, and ensure an overall higher quality of life.
Now for the challenge: making sure your senior has everything they need to eat well, including access to the right foods and the know-how to enjoy them. Here are some of our top tips that make getting more fruits and veggies less work.
Find Easy Recipes
Maybe in their younger days, your senior family member could throw together a holiday feast without breaking a sweat. But cooking can become more burdensome as you age. Finding easy and fruit- and veggie-rich recipes can help your senior spend less time and energy in the kitchen and encourage them to eat well.
The internet is full of simple, quick, healthy recipes that include fruits and vegetables. Go through a few sites, like Silver Cuisine, to find recipes they’d like to try. Write them down or print them so they have a stack of go-to meal ideas. Look for meals that you can make in large batches so all they have to do is heat and eat.
Help Them with Meal Planning
Meal planning is a powerful tool in helping anyone make healthier food choices. When you plan your meals and have all the ingredients on hand, it makes it easier to stick to a healthy eating schedule.
This could be an excellent task to delegate to your Asheville home care or Charlotte home care provider. Many agencies can help plan meals as well as shop for groceries.
Prep Their Food
Food prep, especially cutting fruits and vegetables, can mean extra time in the kitchen. If a lack of energy is part of the problem, offer to do their food prep so they can skip right to cooking. Cutting all your fruits and vegetables at once can add up to major time savings. This is another task you could delegate to your in-home care provider.
Get Fresh Produce Delivered to Their Home
Seniors that can’t or prefer not to grocery shop can have fresh produce delivered straight to their door. Delivery services like The AVL Box curate locally grown produce from farmers in Asheville and Western North Carolina. Locally grown produce is usually fresher than what you might find in a grocery store and may also be more nutrient-rich. This is an excellent way to improve your senior diet with very little effort.
Make and Freeze Nutritious Meals
Making large batches of meals and freezing them in individual containers saves time, money, and hassle for your senior. When they finish one meal, they can pull another to thaw and eat it the next day. Cleanup is minimal, and they don’t have to spend time prepping and cooking each day.
For more senior health solutions, head back to our blog or reach out for more info about in-home care.
Follow our senior living blog for more tips!
Sources:
https://blog.silvercuisine.com/15-quick-simple-meals-for-seniors/
https://hnrca.tufts.edu/myplate/myplate-for-older-adults/fruits-veggies
https://blog.silvercuisine.com/9-simple-tips-to-add-fruits-and-vegetables-into-a-seniors-diet/
https://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/health-benefits-of-fruits-and-vegetables.aspx
