Are you or your loved ones considering shifting to a retirement community? When you are choosing a community for yourself or your family members, the indication that a community cares about both nutrition and the eating experience will be on the plates they offer.
Therefore, to view and taste the cuisine before making a choice, be sure to arrange a tour to the community to experience how dining will be like. Let our guide enlighten you more about assisted living dining solutions.
How Assisted Living Menus Balance Nutrition and Preferences
Before we dive into the different kinds of dining that are available, let us first look at how assisted living creates menus with residents’ individual nutritional needs. By revamping their menus, receiving feedback from residents, and cooperating closely with chefs and dietitians to create enticing and healthful options, many senior living dining services are exceeding expectations.
A top-notch assisted living community understands how important it is to take into account each resident’s distinct preferences and requirements when developing a menu for its dining services.
Moreover, many communities can accommodate a low-sodium diet or a carbohydrate-controlled diet if necessary. Residents are also able to provide feedback through community comment cards to write feedback on the meal they just ate or can request specific items on the menu.
What to Look for in Assisted Community Dining Services
What can you or your loved one regularly anticipate from senior dining services? Here are some of the services communities offer:
Restaurant-style Dining
This setting allows residents to interact and gives them a sense of being out. Residents are greeted, served, and given a menu to resemble a restaurant. Many local restaurants compete with assisted care communities, and this may help ensure that they at least try to give your loved one the greatest eating experience possible.
Some communities decide to provide healthy, nutritious snacks to residents to satisfy their cravings for food in those moments when you or a loved one is hungry in between meals or before going to sleep.
Sustainable, Health-conscious Practices
The quality of the eating experience at assisted living communities is also improved by new approaches to sourcing regional, fresh, and innovative products. Nowadays, a lot of people are concerned about the source of their ingredients, and some even grow their own vegetables on the grounds.
This will be easy if this is happening in a community you or a loved one are thinking about. If having access to local produce is important to you, find out if the community has a food garden and ask if you or your loved one may take a tour.
Private Dining Rooms
Private dining rooms are becoming more common in assisted living communities to enable people to celebrate special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. Residents can have the option to rent a community’s private dining room for a celebration with guests and ask for a special menu.
Furthermore, residents typically have the option to invite other residents for free, though non-residents would have to pay. Special menus, which would include a resident’s particular dietary needs, ought to be developed similarly to how a catering service would.
