The Pure Food Co: malnutrition and swallowing issues widespread in aged care

The texture-modified food specialist will release a White Paper next week proposing three recommendations to improve nutrition and food safety in aged care.

The Weekly SOURCE has received an advance copy of The Pure Food Co’s The White Paper, which highlights growing evidence malnutrition and swallowing difficulties are widespread among aged care residents, contributing to higher rates of falls, infections, and hospitalisations.

The Paper also points to the nutritional challenges of the Government’s growing reliance on in-home aged care, saying it introduces new nutritional challenges.

“Home care providers have little to no visibility of what meals are ordered or consumed” and there is “widespread undernutrition” among home care recipients, the White Paper states.

“Without data on nutritional intake, [home care] case managers cannot accurately assess wellbeing or intervene when risks emerge.”

The first recommendation of the White Paper is improving oversight of nutrition for Support at Home recipients.

Home care providers should be able to monitor nutritional adequacy of meals, identify risks, and have informed conversations with clients about food, The Pure Food Co recommends.

Two-thirds of aged care residents malnourished

The White Paper also makes two further recommendations:

• strengthen access to speech pathology assessment in residential aged care, and
• require providers preparing texture-modified meals in-house to maintain a documented choking and dysphagia risk management plan.

The Pure Food Co’s Australian Director Chris Deed said: “When we get nutrition right, we see measurable improvements in weight stability, wound healing, mobility and overall health. Food sits right at the intersection of safety, dignity and clinical care.”

Who is The Pure Food Co?

The Pure Food Co provides texture-modified meals to more than 500 aged care facilities across Australia and services 80% of the aged care market in its home country of New Zealand.

The Pure Food Co partners with ASX-listed Regis Aged Care, one of Australia's largest aged care providers. Regis CEO and MD Linda Mellors contributed the White Paper's Foreword.

She said: “The Pure Food Co’s white paper is a timely and welcome contribution to the national discussion about food, nutrition and ageing. It invites thoughtful consideration of how we can do better, and how innovation and collaboration can help shape a stronger future for aged care in Australia.”

The Pure Food Co provides an end-to-end nutrition system. They provide nutritionally fortified, IDDSI-compliant meals, a menu service ensuring meals address clinical needs, staff education, change management support, and digital systems covering consumption, costs, and clinical risk.

Coroner recommendations following choking deaths

The NSW Coroner recently made two recommendations related to choking deaths in residential aged care. She said kitchen and nursing staff working in aged care should receive training related to choking risks, and elements of the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) diet should be reconsidered, or better defined and described.