If your elderly family member has a hard time eating full meals, snacks can be the perfect answer. The trick, though, is that the snacks your senior is eating need to be productive ones for her. That means that they need to have nutrients in a small package.
Bump up the Protein Count
Protein is especially important in snacks. It can help your senior to boost her blood sugar if it’s flagging a little and it is necessary for her to maintain her muscles. Lean proteins can help her to feel a little more full than carb-heavy snacks and they’re full of other nutrients that your elderly family member’s body can really use to keep her healthy and active.
Avoid Added Sugar
Added sugar isn’t as necessary in snack foods as manufacturers want you to believe. Look carefully at the ingredients on pre-packaged snacks and avoid versions that have a lot of added sugar. If the snack is primarily carbs and is high in sugar content, then it might be a good idea to try something else. Sweet snacks can be exactly what your senior is craving, though, so it’s always better to stick with naturally sweet foods that offer other benefits, like berries. Berries are sweet, but they’re also high in antioxidants and fiber.
Look for Empty Calories
Something else you want to look for on the labels of snack foods are high calorie counts. Usually high calorie snacks don’t have a lot of nutrients in them. Think about snack cakes, for instance. They might be tasty once in a while, but what does your senior really get from eating snack cakes? There’s a lot of sugar, flour, and not much else. The calories she’s getting don’t have a lot of nutrients along with them.
Offer Lots of Water with Snacks
Something you might want to consider doing is offer water along with snacks. Even if you only offer your senior a glass of water, that might be more than she would have had otherwise. Proper hydration does a lot to keep your senior going, and sometimes hunger pangs are actually her body telling her that she’s thirsty. Adding some water along with a snack covers both of those bases.
One of your jobs as your senior’s caregiver is to help her to have as balanced a diet as possible. That’s easier some days than others, of course, but it’s not something that you can’t accomplish.
If you or an aging loved one is considering caregivers in Park City, MT, please contact the caring staff at SYNERGY HomeCare Billings today at 406-839-2390.
