Helping Your Parent Eat Better

If you’re an adult child of an aging parent and are helping them with things like homecare, healthcare, and all the other items your parent needs to continue to live independently, you might have noticed your parent is not eating as well as she used to.

As a person grows older, their eating habits change. No longer need to prepare family meals, they might become more dependent on frozen meals and takeout. It might seem easier to them. Preparing meals can seem overwhelming for just one person. Of course, elderly individuals have a more difficult time prepping for a meal, following a recipe, and even cleaning up afterwards.

But eating freshly made meals and snacks will help keep your parent feeling better. It will provide her body the nutrients it needs to fight bacteria, have the energy it needs, and even help it look better with healthier skin, nails, and hair.

Here are some ways to help your parent eat better, even if she is living alone in her home or apartment.

Meal Prep

One of the easiest ways to ensure your parent eats well all week is to set aside one day a week for meal prep. You could make plans with your parent to help her prepare meals for the week, so that when she’s hungry, she simply needs to pop them in the oven or assemble them to eat. This can also be a great task if you have hired someone to provide companion care at home for your parent. Your companion care at home provider can help your parent chop vegetables, assemble meals into storage containers, and write out any reheating instructions. Having these meals on hand will reduce the desire of your parent to pop in a frozen meal, full of sodium and low on nutrients.

Snack Prep

It might seem easy to your parent to grab some cookies or a bag of chips when feeling a little hungry between meals, but help her choose a healthier snack by having them ready for her to grab just as easily as she grabs that bag of chips. Again, it helps to have a day when snacks are purchased and prepared for the upcoming week. Have your companion care at home provider wash fruit so it’s ready to grab when your parent needs a sweet snack. She can also have crunchy snacks on hand by cutting up and washing veggies to quickly grab and much on. Buy some Greek yogurt dip to add a little extra flavor to your parent’s snack choice.

Portion Control

Sometimes a person just needs some sweet treats or salty fried snacks. Help your parent stick with portion control by either buying single-serve containers or doing it yourself. You can purchase a bigger box of cookies and then put them in small Ziplock bags, so it’s easy for your parent to grab one and not sit with an entire box of cookies on her lap while watching the news.

A little preparedness can help your parent stay on track with healthy eating.