We all eat with our eyes first. A plate full of food needs to visually stimulate us first to whet our appetite, to get those taste buds tingling and the saliva flowing. Colours, shapes, delicious aromas and the arrangement of food on a plate all play an important part in our mealtime experience.
But what if, due to complex health needs, for your own safety, your meals had to be pureed for you, like baby food? How would you feel? How do you think that might affect your appetite?
Here at Hcsuk, we are passionate about helping everyone to achieve eating delicious and appetising meals with dignity and independence, and we're really proud to be the first Uk Company to introduce the concept of improving the presentation n of pureed meals for people with swallowing difficulties, with our range of puree food moulds.
Historically, due to a lack of resources, training and knowledge, people with swallowing difficulties who needed to have texture modified diets would be served a bowl of pureed food like baby food, all mixed together, tasteless and unappetising.
More recently, improvements have been made so that different foods would be pureed separately and different coloured‘ blobs’ would make up a meal on a plate. But still, people could not recognise what they were eating and refused to eat, leading to malnutrition and other associated health issues.
By introducing a range of food moulds, a food thickener and training, now pureed meals can be brought back to life and look how they should, and people with swallowing difficulties can again enjoy tasty, nutritious and appetising meals.
This is how our food moulds have transformed mealtimes for one 12 year old girl:
‘My daughter is 12 years old; she has a diagnosis of Downs ‘Syndrome, oral Dysphagia, autism, sensory processing disorder and food intolerances. Previously, I have only ever been able to give her pureed or mashed food, which she was not particularly interested in. She is assisted while eating.
The first time she saw her ‘food moulded‘ dinner, she shouted ‘carrots!‘ The second time she wanted to know what every bit of food was on her plate. This time I had used parsnips in the carrot mould. ‘What’s that, what’s that?’ she said as SHE used a fork to scoop up individual pieces of dinner into her mouth with glee. But what is most important is that my daughter is beginning to enjoy her mealtimes and showing greater independence....... because of the moulded food."
If you haven’t come across this concept before, check out the videos below to see what they can do.
Once you've watched the videos, maybe you'd like to read our Dignified Dining Guide too, drop us an email on sales@hcsuk.co.uk to order your FREE copy.