As a speech-language pathologist, I have empathized with my dysphagia patients over the years as I watched them struggling to eat and drink pureed foods and thickened liquids which appeared very unappetizing. I listened to their complaints and tried to imagine how awful it would be to be on a modified diet like that. I heard comments frequently like "It has no taste." or "It tastes terrible."
Many of my patients lost weight while on modified diets because they would rather not eat at all than eat that stuff, and some of them would refuse to follow the physician's orders and risk getting aspiration pneumonia or choking rather than being restricted to foods and liquids they couldn't enjoy.
My heart broke for them. I wanted to help them get better and I wanted to make the modified diet taste better so that they could still enjoy life until they did get better. Along the way, I have discovered a few things that can really improve the taste of thickened liquids and pureed diets.
My favorite trick is to mix a pudding cup with a glass of cold milk. It mixes pretty easily with a spoon, or you can put it in the blender. This makes a great tasting thickened liquid, with no Thick-It needed! You can adjust the thickness by the amount of pudding and milk you use. For thicker consistency, use more pudding, and to make it thinner, use more milk.
Another favorite of mine is to mix applesauce with juice to create a thickened liquid that tastes very good. Just like with the pudding, you simply adjust the amount of applesauce to create the thickness you need. Occasional stirring is needed for the apple sauce and juice if you don't drink it right away. It tends to settle at the bottom of the glass if it is left sitting for a while, which makes the liquid at the top of the glass too thin. So make sure it is stirred well at all times and enjoy!
For pureed food, the problem is that when you put foods in the blender and add liquid so that it will blend into a puree, the liquid dilutes the taste, leaving foods tasting very bland and unappealing. This is an easy problem to fix. For meat dishes, add a spoonful of Better Than Bouillion, chicken or beef flavor as appropriate. This stuff tastes so good you won't even care that it's pureed! You can also add it to mashed potatoes, rice, noodles, and vegetables when you puree them in the blender.
It's also great to give dysphagia patients who are on pureed diets or thickened liquids foods and drinks which are "normal" pureed or thick liquids for everyone, such as: mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, devilled ham, tuna fish mixed with mayonnaise, apple sauce, yogurt, pudding, instant oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, and fruit smoothies. These foods are familiar, which is very comforting for dysphagia patients.
Milk shakes, ice cream, sherbets, and sorbets at first glance seem to be good pureed or thick liquids, but they actually melt when they make contact with your warm mouth and become thin liquids which can be very dangerous for dysphagia patients. By adding a thickener, such as Thick-It to them and mixing it in with a spoon or a blender, in the same proportions you would with the same quantity of thin liquids, you easily convert these tasty treats into pureed dishes or thickened liquids.
Soups are another great option for people on pureed diets. You can take any can of ready to eat soup and pour it in the blender, mix it up, heat it up, and it becomes a quick and easy honey thick liquid or pureed soup that tastes great. If you want to spend more time, making homemade soups, the possibilities are endless! You can make cream of potato soup, tomato soup, broccoli cheese soup, cream of mushroom soup, and cream of chicken soup, just to name a few. As long as the end product is thick and smooth by putting it through the blender, use any soup ingredients you like to make a variety of options.
Nothing is better than fully recovering from dysphagia, but these ideas and suggestions will hopefully make the road to recovery more pleasant so that you can have a little fun on your way there.
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About the Author: Jolie Parker, M.S.CCC-SLP is a speech language pathologist who specializes in the treatment of dysphagia. She is a co-inventor of the PhagiaFlex Device for dysphagia, which has been clinically shown to strengthen the swallow, improve esophageal opening and laryngeal elevation, and widen the UES during the swallow.