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I prepare a healthy dinner, just about every single day. My mom, who knows I can't stand to waste food, turns around eats something else. She has been hospitalized for an intestinal blockage recently, but continues to eat bread constantly. She eats bread, pasta, waffles, pancakes, biskets, and all sorts of crud. I prepare a healthy dinner every single day, with veggies, and she eats something else. I know my mom likes cabbage. Last night, my husband grilled, and I made cabbage with skinless sausage in it. she ate ramen. Mind you, I don't buy this stuff, my mom does. I call that junk, weekend food. During the week, I prepare, pretty healthy meals for my family. It is so frustrating. I like spicy food, I have to prepare meals blander for her to eat. I do that, and she still doesn't eat. I'm not a chef, but my meals are good, and tasty.

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Tomorrow I'll be 84. I know all about "Healthy food" and the push for more fruit and vegetables. So what! I am not hungry much of the time - my activity level is lower than yours and my need for food is lower. Eat better for a longer life? Really? Are a few days more worth stuffing myself with vegetables when I don't feel like eating anyway? So dear daughters relax. Don't feel guilty. What was essential for your children to grow up healthy is not essential to fuel my quiet life style. Don't fret so. As long as I am capable of making my own choices, let me choose what I want to eat. After all half of my contemporaries are already dead so my choices haven't been so bad for me after all.
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Add veggies to the food she likes - green beans and peas into the pasta; blueberries into the waffles, pancakes and biscuits. There's a reason why she likes those foods, so try to exploit it by making it more healthy until you can gradually begin decreasing the amounts of those kinds of foods.
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As people age, and their taste buds begin to die, they usually prefer food that is sweet or spicy or salty. By making food that is bland for your Mother, you may actually be making food she can't taste. Try letting her eat the spicy food you prefer. Serve a slice of bread or roll with each meal and toast or biscuits with breakfast. That may satisfy her taste for a carb. while she's eating a healthy meal. At some point, though, you have to realize that they are an adult and if they are still capable of buying and preparing their own food, you may just have to give up trying to gain control. Pick your battles and don't let it become an issue.
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Is the issue really food? Or maybe about control? Sounds like your mother is playing games, trying to keep you off-balance. You're doing everything right where food is concerned. But for your own mental health you might want to practice detaching emotionally. Blessings for success with this.
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This one is easy--you suck it up. Just make two meals, and make it as easy on yourself as possible. Do not lose a moment being frustrated. Just make the meals and keep on trucking.
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Being old enough (74) to see this from the other side, a few comments: I eat very few veggies because they don't digest well for me and I don't need the results of that. I don't eat hardly any carbs because I keep my blood sugar under control without meds or insulin. I do an egg for breakfast, a fair amount of chicken, fish, and sausage-y things because they are easy to chew. (Beef isn't.) I do like soups an stews, don't add salt to things but don't make a fuss about salt. If something has to be sweetened, I prefer stevia (sucralose can mess up my digestion). Lots of yogurt and cheese, one of my favorite light meals is a bowl of original, unflavored, full-fat yogurt with cinnamon swirled into it, and maybe blueberries. Avocados are good. Nut butters, right off the spoon, watch the sugar content! I mix coconut oil and unsweetened powdered chocolate into almond butter, usually with cashew, sunflower or tahini mixed in. I don't worry about fats, because from what I've researched, fat in the diet is not related to fat in the arteries, and most oils and cholesterol meds are not good (had horrible side effects from statins). I'm 80 # under my top weight from 15 years ago and my weight and blood sugar are stable. I still work full time. I eat what my daughters cook for the most part, but avoid the rice, beans, chips, etc. Really thin flour tortillas make good sandwiches with less "bread". Most of us should be watching the carbs because the effects of high blood sugar are bad, and maintaining it with diet is safer than meds (this way it doesn't go too low too often.)
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Im not in that position Carla I am mums sole care-giver and I am therefore obliged to ENSURE she eats as healthily as I can get her to eat so if I lie about whats in the food I can live with that. I have to say that since I took over the entire cooking Mums general health has improved (yes all right you lot I know she is in hospital with UTI ad urosepsis but I can only encourage her to drink I can't make her and I also can't make her take the tablets - well I could but its abuse and I still struggle with it).
She has had some of her tablets stopped as a result of general good care and I am actually quite proud of that - shame I look like a beached whale really!
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LOL, really, with Dementia they get like children. You really don't want to be a slave to them. Like my husband says "she won't remember it tomorrow".
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It's always a challenge to get my mother to eat something healthy. She is a country girl from south Alabama and was raised on fried chicken. She likes fried foods. If someone could figure out a way to fry orange juice, she would do it. She tells me that her mama always fried the chicken, the pork chops, the fish. I remind her that most of her family had also died young of heart attack and stroke. This doesn't register with her, since she is 88 and has outlived the rest of her family.

When I put together a healthy meal, she says it's not fit to eat. But since I don't want to make two meals, I cook reasonably healthy with some compromising -- sometimes frying or sauteing. The thing that bothers me most is she will load up on the meat and take a little spoonful of the different vegetables.

After cooking for a father that didn't want to eat and would hide his food and a mother who thinks good food isn't fit to eat, I just cook what I know is good and healthy enough. I've learned that we can encourage or nag and it doesn't do any good. I've also learned that as people get older they also get a more narrow selection of foods they want to eat. So I cook what I know I should, then don't worry if it isn't "fit to eat." That just means it isn't fried, dripping with butter, or loaded with salt. :)
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I know exactly what you're talking about. I went to get lengths lastbevening to make fried chicken, carrot coins & a side salad.....and the only rhing Mom would eat was 1/2 cup of the carrot coins. She claimed she wasn't hungry....but then she wanted cake & ice cream for dessert. Told her if she was too full to eat the proper meal, then she was too full for dessert. She refuses to eat "real" food for breakfast, instead eating donuts, danishes, cinnamon rolls, etc. I tried making her a Jimmy Dean sauage, egg & cheese bisquit (and you know how small they are). She ate 1/3 of it & refuse anymore, saying she was full. So her total dietary intake yesterday was a small strip of cheese danish for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch, another small strip of cheese danish in the afternoon & carrot coins for supper. It frustrates me to no end, especially since I purchase all of our food from my own money & it pains me to throw food out. All I see are dollar bills being flung into the trash!
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