Colour Count

All three homes recently took part in an awareness week to make sure everyone ate or drank five different “colours” each day as part of a healthy, enjoyable and tasty diet.

This was a fun challenge for the chefs in the kitchen, encouraging everyone to try new foods with novel ways of presentation, optimising the nutritional value, hydration and colours in an exciting way.

This once again raises the awareness of offering an exciting and varied diet with maximum nutritional and hydration benefits but also at the same time supporting those with swallowing difficulties to dine with dignity. The challenge was to ensure the food was appealing colour wise even when served as a smoothie or as a blended diet for those residents who have swallowing difficulties.

Going through the colour charts the chefs worked with the ranges of food in the following categories, red, yellow, orange, green and purple.
For example yellow, may include banana, egg, cheese, custard, sweetcorn etc.

The greatest challenge is to get five colours on the same plate as a meal. This was such a positive awareness week that the kitchens now embrace the idea on a daily basis going forward.

Scroll down to see the creative ideas and meals which were prepared