Getting someone to eat

[OneTC]

Who has last interest in food.

My mum used to enjoy most foods but since being diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years she has slowly but surely lost interest in most stuff she used to like.

Normal day goes like this:

Breakfast: toasted sandwich, sometimes this gets half eaten
Snacks: sweeties, biscuits, fruit.
Lunch: I ask what mum wants, she tells me whatever I'm having, I cook something, then mum tells me she doesn't want it, or that it's raw, undercooked or out of date. I ask her what she wants, she doesn't know, then she gets angry and refuses any more offers.
Snacks: crisps, fruit, chocolate.
Dinner: Like lunch just later in the day

Then after and in between I get shouted at for not giving her any food!

I got input from a dietician and they said just feed her any crap that she'll eat even if it's just sweets and biscuits but if I try and give her just sweets she complains that it's not substantial food, plus it doesn't feel right.

oh and everything is raw apparently, or too hard, or too soft, or too hot, or too cold. And if I serve something she looks at it until it's cold and then doesn't want it

i also try and make it so that we're eating together, which also does my fucking head in because I don't want to eat 3 meals a day and now I end up eating 3 meals a day on my own.

any tips or advice or have you found anything that works for you and your parent or charge?

List of lost foods:
Eggs, onions, most meat, fish, prawns, spicy food, pepper, cheese (except toastie) most green vegetables, rice, stuff in sauce, bread or toast (except toastie)

I'm also not allowed to use the oven for some reason.

Foods that work:
Potatoes, mashed or new.
Carrot: raw, grated.
Tomato soup but that's getting very hit and miss

That sounds so difficult @OneTC.

Are you living with her? Has she had a Care Needs Assessment recently?

Sounds like you might both benefit from her going to daycare for at least a couple of days a week so that you get a break and she gets to have lunch there

My mum had a lot of problems with food, partly as she couldn't process things visually so couldn't recognise the food on her plate, and partly textural issues which made the whole act of chewing and swallowing difficult. She might have had changes with taste as well but that was harder to tell.
After a phase when she pretty much only ate ice cream, she eventually settled on a totally fixed menu which she ate every day for 6 years - toast and strawberry jam, fried egg/ hashbrown/corn on the cob , and then a ham sandwich. Occasionally a yum yum in the day, plus ice cream. Always on a blue plastic plate and drinks with a straw. Anything else would be thrown or spat.
Would she have a toastie for lunch? I can see that from my mums perspective the crunch, easy to eat, clearly identifiable and reproducible taste of a toastie would have worked perfectly

She hasn't left the house aside from medical treatments in about 2 years. Overall her condition is pretty good and I don't live here but I come every morning and stay until evening, when she goes to bed she doesn't get up again until morning. She lives in an assisted living place. Much as I like the idea of getting her to go to a day centre I think getting her to go out twice a week would be huge dramas.

she eventually settled on a totally fixed menu which she ate every day for 6 years

We've just got off about 2 years of her eating mostly the same things every day and it's the sudden rejection of most of those things that's caused the problem now. I would love to be able to make 3 different things. I tried her on multiple toasties in the day but then she started to go off them and I didn't want to ruin them so I cut back to just having it for breakfast.

I just went out and bought the stuff that she said she'd like to eat (pasta with mushrooms and ham) and when I was cutting the stuff up she said she wasn't going to eat it. Better than after I've cooked it I suppose!

My DM used to enjoy really healthy foods. For the last three years that she lived at home she’d mainly eat boxes of chocolates or sausage baps with mustard or blue cheese burgers I’d get delivered via Deliveroo.
She’s in a nursing home now and was in hospital for four months previously. She went up two dress sizes in hospital and eats a varied diet now. She does enjoy sweet things more than before she developed Alzheimer’s.

My mother in law lives alone with moderate dementia. She eats well at our house and when taken for pub lunch etc. She also goes to a day centre once a week where she enjoys a 2 course meal. However at home, she eats like a teenager...cake,biscuits and crisps plus the odd yogurt. Eating for her is a social thing , best done with others. Increasingly sweet tooth. I'm worried about constipation as she is eating very little fibre. Fruit sits in the fruit bowl untouched. Its become a battle..we check her kitchen bin for clues about what she has eaten. We heat up a microwave meal and stand over her whilst she eats it all the while insisting that she is not hungry. She is still able to walk to a mini Tesco which is where she buys her treats. Not surevwhat the answer is.

My grandad lives with me, foods he used to love he suddenly refused.
Spoke to the GP because he was losing so much weight,they advised at his age any calories are good calories, if he wants to eat chocolate all day, so be it.
After much trial & error of various foods he will now eat a bowl of Cheerios with milk & sugar for breakfast, strawberry jam sandwich for lunch & either cottage pie, stew & mash or corned beef hash for tea.
He also always has a bar of chocolate on the go & will very rarely ask for a slice of Madeira cake.
I think part of the issue for my grandad was that his sight massively deteriorated, so he struggles to see what he's eating. He's hard of hearing so we struggle to tell him what's for dinner & on top of that he lost the ability to use a knife & fork. He finds the meat/mash/veg mashed together easy to eat with a spoon, so has been eating alot more.

I've seen people online do charcuterie style grazing boards set up and left out. Fruit and a salad etc all chopped up and prepared appetisingly in the fridge or out on the side