Seniors with swallowing difficulties try special dim sum
Most days, Madam Elizabeth Low, 85, is given pureed food or a milk supplement for her meals at the nursing home she stays in.
But on Oct 23, she had yum cha for the first time since she can remember – a menu of siu mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), har gow (shrimp dumplings) and chwee kueh (steamed rice cakes), topped off with pandan cake and tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) for dessert.
The senior, who has a sweet tooth, polished off the pandan cake in seconds. She has moderate dementia and swallowing difficulties.
“I love it,” said Madam Low, who stays at The Salvation Army’s Peacehaven Nursing Home in Upper Changi. Asked if she wants to have such a meal every day, she said: “If they can.”
Madam Low was among 90 nursing home residents who took part in a pilot programme by the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) and Hong Kong social enterprise, The Project Futurus. The organisations teamed up to prepare softmeal versions of familiar local dishes, ensuring that they retain their original shape and flavour while being easy to swallow.
The food caters to people with dysphagia, a condition with swallowing difficulties, which affects between 58,000 to 174,000 individuals aged 65 and above in Singapore. Dysphagia can affect people who have had a stroke, neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and disease or injury to the head, neck, throat or oesophagus.
A chef from The Project Futurus team prepared each dish by blending siu mai, for instance, with water and enzymes using a Japanese softmeal enzyme technique to get a gel texture. He then moulded the food to resemble their original forms.
The end product tastes the same as the original siu mai, with a different texture and a reduced risk of choking.
Here, the Ministry of Health introduced the EatSafe SG initiative in 2019 to improve safe swallowing practices for patients with dysphagia.
But despite efforts in training caregivers to prepare suitable meals, many patients still face limited food options, said Dr Carol Ma, head of gerontology programmes at SUSS.
In a week-long feasibility study from Oct 21 to Oct 25, The Project Futurus and SUSS held workshops for 120 care staff and served the meals at three nursing homes – Catholic Welfare Services’ St Joseph’s Home, Methodist Welfare Services Bethany Nursing Home, and Salvation Army Peacehaven Nursing Home.
The residents dined in a room decorated to look like a traditional Cantonese restaurant, complete with nostalgic music and volunteer waitresses pushing carts of dim sum. Called Sensory Restaurant on Wheels, the aim of the initiative was to create a dining experience that brought back fond memories for the elderly.
The team will be getting feedback from the nursing homes on the programme and the constraints they faced, and hope to take their findings to the Agency for Integrated Care to discuss next steps.
Ms Queenie Man, founder of The Project Futurus, which registered in Singapore in January 2024, said her team is exploring setting up an office here to promote positive ageing. The team aims to create a supportive environment for seniors through education, advocacy and community services, and its partnership with SUSS is its first official programme in Singapore.
Nursing homes in Hong Kong have received HK$75 million (S$12.7 million) in government funding a year since 2021 to provide soft meals to elderly persons with swallowing difficulties.
Some companies and hospitals here are also coming up with more palatable meals for seniors and those with dysphasia.
Social enterprise The Gentle Group specialises in pureed meals and care services for those with dysphagia, and its new expanded facility in Admiralty can produce at least 2,000 such meals a day.
Alexandra Hospital also started an initiative in 2021 called Smaller Bites to Swallow Right, to help individuals with dysphagia to enjoy hawker fare.
The hospital’s speech therapists train hawkers to prepare their food using techniques like chopping, cutting, mincing and blending, so that older customers can enjoy the food safely.
The therapists have trained about 30 hawkers from Alexandra Village Food Centre and ABC Brickworks Food Centre so far.
Citing fast-food chains such as Fairwood in Hong Kong and Yoshinoya in Japan, which offer soft meal options for dishes such as tomato sauce pork chop rice, Ms Man said she hopes to get restaurants in Singapore on board to sell softmeals as well.
“I really hope that restaurants can bring this in, then we can get more families with elders with dysphagia to come out to have dinner together,” she said.
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