Borough Care marked Nutrition and Hydration Week (11-17 March) with a programme of special food and drink related activities.
Every day during Nutrition and Hydration Week, the catering teams at each of the company’s 11 homes provided tasty treats for residents based on a different theme. Events included mocktail Monday, using fruits and juices to make non-alcoholic drinks; a cheese and wine tasting; an afternoon tea party; fruit tasting and a breakfast club. The week culminated in a Sunday roast celebration meal.
Commenting on the Nutrition and Hydration Week events, Nicci Gregory, head cook at Borough Care’s Bamford Close home in Cale Green, says: “Myself and Joanne Morris, our activity lifestyle facilitator, decided our events needed to be fun and creative so residents would want to engage with each activity.
"For mocktail Monday, we decided on a Hawaiian themed party. I mixed and pureed ingredients to make a choice of mocktails, which we served in sugar coated glasses with tropical themed accessories. We put on tropical themed music and soon our residents were enjoying singing and dancing along.”
Nicci Gregory continues: “For our cheese tasting session, we sourced a wide variety of different cheeses to tickle the taste buds of our residents. Lots of the residents hadn’t sampled many different cheeses before but were up for the new experience. Wensleydale and Cheshire came out on top, with Stilton getting a definite thumbs down.
"We decided to make our afternoon tea party very traditional to provoke memories among residents. I made a selection of savoury treats and the obligatory cucumber sandwiches, followed by an array of cakes and scones. Our residents immediately engaged with the activity and many of their family and friends joined us for the occasion. It was a wonderful afternoon, with lots of smiles and laughter.”
Nutrition and Hydration Week highlights and educates people on the value of food and drink in maintaining health and wellbeing in health and social care settings. Preventing malnutrition and dehydration is crucial to good health, especially in older people.
Mark Dale, catering and hospitality manager at Borough Care, says: “We are committed to ensuring all our residents enjoy high quality food and eat well. Offering healthy, well balanced meals to suit a person’s specific dietary requirements is an important part of the care we provide.
"Getting older people to eat well can sometimes be difficult. The food we serve not only needs to be nutritious, it has to be presented well and look appetising to encourage people to eat it.
"We have recently introduced a nutritional tool that can track a resident’s food consumption. This enables us to make sure people are receiving the correct nutrients in their diet. Nutrition and Hydration Week provided the ideal opportunity to highlight the importance of food and drink to good health.”
