Older adults, in some cases, who live alone, tend to miss meals and it is not for lack of money or food at home. In some cases, it is more a question of preparing the meals.
Yes, it may be that you do not have the energy or the desire to prepare them and if it is a dinner for example, you may decide to drink a glass of water, alone, and go to bed.
Although they may feel fine, i.e. skipping a meal or two doesn’t seem to affect them much, this is unhealthy and if it continues the effect will be felt sooner than expected.
So if you know an older person who lives with you, the following suggestions may be helpful in getting them to eat all their meals every day.
Food Map
It’s a good idea to plan ahead what you’re going to eat. A few days or even a week in advance is fine. Yes, they could write down what they would like to prepare and put the list in a place where they could easily see it. Maybe the fridge or the pin-up board or whatever works best for them.
They could go through some recipe books and maybe try something new, if they are tired of the same dish repeatedly. You don’t need to buy a new cookbook, unless you’d like to, maybe the library has some and you can borrow them for a while.
In fact, a new dish may be just what they wanted to motivate them in this direction.
wide jar
Instead of making small meals every day, though we’ll get to that shortly, it’s worth cooking up a big pot and freezing the unused portion for another day.
Having the food already prepared can take some of the pressure off of them. Yes, only then will it be a matter of taking it out of the freezer and heating it up.
If they were charged with cooking for a large number of people, this may be the right thing for them. Yeah, they wouldn’t mind doing it. However, if cooking small meals is something they are accused of, they may not be too inclined to do so.
Therefore, offering to help prepare a large pot is a good idea.
small pot
Although they may have prepared food at home, at times, they may not want to eat that. So buying easy-to-prepare meals in the deli section of the supermarket will get the job done. Meals can be as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich with tomato salad and iced tea.
By doing so, they will not spend much time in the kitchen and will eat substantial food.