My 94 year old father is in assisted living. They have healthy meals 3 times a day. My dad loves breakfast and says that is all that keeps him going. He refuses to eat whatever they serve for lunch or dinner. He will go back to his room and drink Ensure and eat a banana and anything sweet he can get his hands on. He has always been a picky eater but it's gotten worse lately. Could this be a natural part of aging that makes him not want real food? He loves anything sweet and I cannot keep enough sweets in his room. On the other hand, he complains that he can't eat anything they serve for lunch or dinner.
I am teasing you, but I seriously would not meddle in the food choices of someone 94.
Leave him be. As a retired RN I can tell you that MOST people in their 90s eat only one meal a day, and that sustains their needed level of activities. It is amazing how little it takes to keep us going.
And of course, no matter our food choices, we will none of us live forever.
Best out to you. Do all you can in the coming year to give your beloved father HIS OWN CHOICES in life whenever you can. Old age is such a time of loss piled upon loss (I guarantee you as an 82 year old). So you want him to have his own choices without your input whenever he is able, and this food choice is one of those times, imho.
I figured at their age, if they want ice cream for breakfast, you ask if they want one scoop or two.
I remember my Mom's grocery list. Each week she had ice cream, Little Debbies, Hostess, bakery made pie or cake, Pepperidge Farm cookies (soft), chocolate chip muffins, along with a chicken or hamburger, and frozen veggies.
I mean he is 94 years old and he now deserves to eat what he wants and if he wants.
No one better try telling me what I should be eating at that age. In fact, no one better tell me now at 65 what I should or shouldn't be eating. We will all have to live with the choices that we make.
And what's the worst that will happen to your father by just eating sweets, other than him enjoying himself and maybe dying a year or 2 earlier?
I've shared this true story on this forum several times now but I will share it again. One of the ladies in my caregiver support groups mom(who had dementia)lived to be 103, and only ate ice-cream and cashews for the last 5 years of her life.
That to me sounds like the perfect diet to enjoy the last years of ones life, don't you think?
Let him eat whatever he wants, he has earned the right!
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