Smoothies are an easy way to bump up the total energy and protein intake for older adults, particularly when they don’t feel like eating. Having a smoothie for breakfast or a snack between meals can help to improve your appetite, while also getting good quality protein that your body can use for muscle building.

This smoothie recipe also provides an excellent source of calcium - it’s the equivalent of 2 serves of dairy!

So, you think you may be heading down the clinical dietitian pathway, or are already there, but you’ve realised it’s not ticking all of your boxes? Are you feeling unsettled and maybe looking around to see what else is out there? Or you can’t get the job you want because there just aren’t enough clinical positions to go around?

Yep, that was me too.

Menu reviews - dietitians either love them or loathe them! What I’ve found is that dietitians tend to not enjoy them because we don’t get the training or have the experience to be able to do them confidently. Elderly nutrition is a specialist area because as we get older, we need more specific nutrients and high quality protein but appetites and overall intake can be really challenging to meet these requirements.

In a simple answer - yes.

It’s highlighting all the negative views on food quality and nutrition through consumer feedback, as it should.

It’s all very well for us as a profession to have a ‘strategic plan’ to create change in the industry, but what about the older people in our care right now? They don’t all have a year to wait until the Royal Commission has finished and recommendations have been made.

My goodness it’s a stressful and scary time for so many. It seems that every time I tune into the news that the numbers of both confirmed cases and deaths has increased. The most frightening part of this for me is seeing the number of older people that are affected and that they have the worst outcomes.

Hi and welcome, I’m so excited to be here with you!

When I graduated as a dietitian, the areas that I decided (then) that I would never work in were aged care and menu reviews. But you’re reading my blog now on just that right?! So what changed?