1, a small amount of meals, snacks to supplement nutrition.
Because of poor chewing and swallowing ability, the elderly often can't eat much at a meal and eat for a long time. In order to get enough calories and nutrition for the elderly every day, nutritionists suggest that the elderly eat in 5-6 meals every day, and prepare some simple snacks between meals, such as low-fat milk biscuits (or nutritious oatmeal), low-fat milk oatmeal, or tofu pudding, soybean milk and eggs, or mix small pieces of fruit or fruit paste with yogurt.
2. Replace some animal proteins with bean products.
The elderly must limit the intake of meat, and some protein sources should be replaced by beans and bean products (such as tofu and soybean milk). In the diet of the elderly, each dinner should contain at least 170g of high-quality protein (such as lean meat, fish, eggs, tofu, etc. Vegetarians should get high-quality protein from beans and nuts (peanuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, etc.). ).
3. Add vegetables to the staple food and cook together.
In order to facilitate the elderly to chew, try to choose soft vegetables, such as tomatoes, loofah, wax gourd, pumpkin, eggplant and green leafy vegetables, and cut them into small pieces or plane them into filaments before cooking. If the elderly usually take porridge or noodle soup as their staple food, they can add 1-2 kinds of vegetables and cook together at a time to ensure that they eat at least 500 grams of vegetables every day.
4. Eat 350 grams of fruit every day.
Fruit is a food that the elderly often ignore. Some soft fruits, such as bananas, watermelons, peaches, papayas, mangoes and kiwis, are very suitable for the elderly. You can slice the fruit or scrape it into mud with a spoon. If you want to make juice, you must pay attention to controlling the amount. You can add some water to dilute it when making juice.
5. supplement vitamin B.
Recent studies have gradually shown that vitamin B is closely related to cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, cataracts, brain function degradation (cognition and memory) and mental health that are prone to occur in the elderly. No matter getting sick, taking medicine or after surgery, it will cause a lot of loss of vitamin B, so for the sick elderly, special attention should be paid to vitamin B supplementation.
Raw grains and nuts are rich in vitamin B, so when preparing three meals for the elderly, you might as well add some brown rice and germ. To cook porridge with white rice, you can also put a small amount of nuts into a blender and break them into powder, and add them to oatmeal to cook oatmeal.
6, food should be thick and thin, easy to digest. Because the gastric motility of the elderly is weakened, the emptying time is prolonged, the secretion of gastric acid and digestive enzymes is reduced, and the digestive ability is poor. Therefore, it is advisable to eat digestible food, especially dinner, porridge, noodles and other foods with soup. Middle-aged and elderly people are prone to constipation due to loose colon pouch and slow intestinal peristalsis. They should eat more crude fiber food, especially vegetables and fruits, which can not only relax the bowels, but also improve the intestinal flora, make food easy to digest and regulate blood sugar and blood lipids.
7. Pay attention to nutrition distribution. For middle-aged and elderly people, whole grains, vegetables and fruits, chickens, ducks and fish should be eaten. Besides protein, sugar and fat, middle-aged and elderly people should pay more attention to the supplement of trace elements and vitamins such as calcium, zinc and selenium. The author once saw a 70-year-old man with a cold and poor diet for a week, which led to frequent angina pectoris, and it was found that it was caused by anemia. The hemoglobin of the patient was 1 1 g before catching a cold, but it actually dropped to 7 g one week after catching a cold, which shows that the nutritional reserve and adjustment ability of the elderly are very low.
8. Properly control the total intake and maintain a proper weight. Eating too many calories can easily lead to obesity. Therefore, it is necessary to properly control intake and exercise properly.
9. Eat clean, fresh and non-perishable food.
10, avoid eating and drinking, especially eating and drinking regularly. For various reasons, some middle-aged people often actively or passively attend banquets, eat and drink too much. In the long run, hypertension, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and cirrhosis will follow.