8.5.3: Increasing the Intake of Certain Foods
For patients who require a high protein or high calorie diet, an extra amount of protein and/or calories would be added to their diet. Patients on these types of diets may need extra calories or protein to help promote healing or weight gain if they are malnourished. It is best to provide snacks throughout the day or smaller meals in order to increase the amount of calories or protein in the diet, rather than to serve larger meals with a larger amount of food. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) has suggestions for increasing protein into the diet. These can be found at: http :// www . upmc . com / patients – visitors / education / nutrition / Pages / tips – for – increasing – protein – in – your – diet . aspx
Here are some suggestions based on UPMC (2015) that Home Health Aides / Personal Care Aides can follow to increase calorie or protein intake for their patients :
- Add cheese slices to sandwiches, eggs, and fruit desserts.
- Grate cheese and add to soups, sauces, casseroles, mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, or cooked meats like meatloaf.
- Use milk instead of water while preparing foods such as hot cocoa, pudding, or hot cereal.
- Add cream sauces made with milk to vegetables and pasta.
- Add a tablespoon of non-fat, dry powdered milk to regular milk, mashed potatoes, and cream soups.
- Use nutritional drinks or shakes, such as drinks that have added nutrients or calories to supplement intake as directed by the Care Plan.
- Make milkshakes with ice cream.
- Use yogurt with fruit and milk to make fruit smoothies.
- Add chopped or sliced eggs to salads, sandwiches, vegetables, and casseroles.
- Add extra egg yolks to scrambled eggs, omelets, pancakes, and French toast.
- Serve hard boiled or deviled eggs as snacks.
- Add nuts, seeds, and wheat germ to salads, cereal, or yogurt.
- Use peanut butter to serve with fruits, vegetables, crackers, as a topping for ice cream, and on sandwiches.
- Add beans to meat and casserole dishes.
- Add meat to salads, on top of potato dishes, with pasta dishes, and to egg dishes.
- Serve yogurt topped with wheat germ, or with fruit for snacks.