Dysphagia in adults is commonplace and can result in life threatening medical problems such as pneumonia, choking, poor nutrition and dehydration if not managed appropriately. The current statistics, provided by Speech Pathology Australia, are quite significant. For example, 50% of older adults in Residential Aged Care, 84% of people with Parkinson’s disease and 100% of people with Alzheimer’s at some stage in their disease progression will experience swallowing difficulties.
Managing swallowing problems for these individuals frequently includes modifying the texture of the food and fluids intake to make them easier and safer to swallow and to reduce the complications that may result.
Modifying the texture of food and fluids, while clinically necessary, creates a deficit for the individual; restricting the variety of foods available and potentially impacting the visual appeal, the ability to recognise or relate to the foods and for some the ability to access finger foods (which are much easier than eating with cutlery).
People on texture modified diets need to eat pureed meals and food like tomato, cucumber, lettuce is limited to a small variety of modified food. Texture modified food is normally served as per the photo below, which illustrates the impact on visual presentation when foods are completely deconstructed by the blending and pureeing process. In recent time, there has been an improvement with Aged Care facilities starting to use food moulds to improve the presentation.
Molecular Gastronomy takes texture modification a leap further because it makes use of the transformation of ingredients that occur in cooking, thereby providing a completely different texture. Molecular Gastronomy has different techniques which are Gel, Foam, Sphere, Powder and Smoke.
Our focus for product development has been Gel and Foam which can help reconstruct food to enable older residents on Texture Modified Food diets to have food that they currently cannot have such as cheese, tomato, salads and a lot more. Molecular gastronomy enabled the development of innovative texture modified food solutions. The application of MG Gels blend on pureed food enabled the creation of texture modified foods that have “a bite” but still dissolve in the mouth and therefore are safe to swallow. In contrast to pureed foods, they have a relatively firm texture, with a real food appearance and with layers of different tastes and textures, such as sandwiches, fruits, vegetables , meat, chicken, fish, cakes, puddings and lot more.
Moreover, the foam technique means older residents that are “nil by mouth” or “pallative care” to have airy foam food so they can experience the flavor of foods without any swallowing. Molecular Gastronomy can also enable many residents, who are currently dependent on carers to be fed, in Residential Aged Care to eat independently as they can pick up the food and eat. Please see below examples of newly developed texture modified foods using Gels and Foam