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Pureed Diets

Foods made soft and blended into homogeneous liquids (puree) are known as pureed foods. Pureed diets are pureed foods prescribed for various reasons -- medical conditions involving difficulty in chewing/swallowing, weight loss programs and geriatric (old age related) or infancy dietary needs.

  1. Pureed Diet for Infants

    • Pureed diet for infants (4 months to a year old) primarily includes milk or water with fruit and vegetable pulp in addition to home-cooked meals. Typically, pureed diet for infants is a stepping stone toward solid food diets. Pureed foods are easy to swallow and require no further chewing. Youcan prepare baby foods with soft, cooked vegetable and fruit puree. Sweet potatoes with apple, cooked rice and banana purees are a few examples. You can liquefy the purees to the right consistency with breast milk, formula milk and water as required.

    Pureed Diet for Geriatric Care

    • Old age is often accompanied by physiological, emotional and illness-related changes. Pureed diet for the elderly is helpful in addressing their nutritional needs without causing them discomfort. Geriatric care (care for elders) involves providing food that is easy to swallow. Also, diet for elders must take into account their specific needs such as low sugar (for diabetics), low salt (for hypertension) or foods free from certain allergens to which that the elder may be sensitive. You can give pureed vegetables and cereals as thick soups. A thin porridge of oats cooked to puree consistency is also suitable for most pureed diets for elders. You can dilute purees with fruit juice, water or even milk to add to the nutritional value of the diet.

    Pureed Diet for Medical Conditions

    • If you puree food to a thin consistency, patients receive through a feeding tube for patients with dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing). Convalescence from surgeries of the stomach or gastro-intestinal tracts demands that food be easier to digest. Solid food can expand the stomach and delay healing. Hence, pureed food is gives an advantage for such patients. Pureed diets need not continue after the healing period. Patients may progress to solid foods thereafter. Be careful to ensure removal of peels, seeds, bones, tough tissues and other inedible parts from the puree.

    Pureed Diet for Post Weight Loss Surgery

    • Bariatric or gastric bypass surgery also demands pureed diets. Such surgeries involve procedures to create a new lemon-sized stomach pouch with the small intestines re-routed into it. These operations, conducted on extremely obese people to reduce stomach size, induce weight loss. Pureed diets in these cases are limited to two to four weeks. As patients gradually progress to solid foods, take care not to injure the stomach tissues.

    Pureed Diet for Detoxification

    • Detoxification diets are strict regimens involving consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. The process calls for complete abstinence from alcohol, fried and fatty foods and tobacco, as they are all considered toxins. Fruit purees, included in detoxification diets, serve as excellent natural sources of fibers, vitamins and carbohydrates. For instance, you can boil fruit like apples, puree and season with lime juice and cinnamon. Follow these detoxification diets for a week, which may make it difficult to adhere to them.

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