Presentation is Everything

My Visiting Angel BFF M.M. once told me that the color RED entices Alzheimer's clients to eat. Thanks MM for that tip. It's a good one!!

Let's see .... which do you find more tempting?

Here you have a hunk of yummy lasagna on a white plate.


Here you have the same hunk of lasagna with a side of salad on a cute plate sitting on a red placemat.











Which is more temping to you? Yes, me too. As a matter of fact, after I took the photo, I ate what was on the plate.

Presentation is everything when you're trying to entice someone to eat. Especially if that someone doesn't have an appetite. One of the desires a person with Alzheimer's loses is the desire to eat. The urge isn't there. They don't recognize being hungry. They lose all interest in eating. Some will eat just because it's "time" to eat. At 12 noon an Alzheimer's client may eat just because for 80 years they always ate at noon. Some may not want to eat but they will because of conditioning. Others may refuse to eat all together which contributes to rapid weightloss and illness. One of our jobs as a caregiver is to make sure our clients eat. So ... make it interesting. Catch their attention. Introduce a little .... RED!


7/14/09 Here's another example of presentation .... most everyone knows what Mott's Apple Sauce is and most of our clients eat this at one time or another. Instead of just plopping a single serve apple sauce and spoon in front of your client .....

.... try presenting the apple sauce to them.

It took me all of 40 seconds to open the apple sauce cup, dump it into a cute dessert dish and add a dollop of strawberry preserves to the top. When I presented this to a client (I found a similar dish in her cabinet) it was as if I were presenting her with a diamond necklace. The client had already strongly refused the apple sauce in the single serve original container but reached out to take my lovely creation. I picked this cute dessert dish up at the local Salvation Army store for a quarter for my purposes here. After I took the photo I handed it to my hubby who said, "Oh, what's this?" in that "oh I'm getting something yummy type of voice." It was a quarter well spent. Presentation is Everything.

Here's a photo of the dish I made up for my client, at her home ... photo was taken with my phone: