Nutritious drink recipes for 86-year old with no appetite

August 11, 2021 2:03 PM

My beloved grandmother has stage four breast cancer and is struggling with her appetite and losing weight. She’s had a poor appetite for a few years but recently isn’t eating much at all. I’m visiting her soon and want to try out some nutritious drinks that could help her get more calories and nutrients - she drinks one Ensure a day but doesn’t love it and finds it’s too thick for her.

I’m planning to get a Nutribullet type blender and am wondering about protein powders, smoothies, etc. Does anyone have any guidance or ideas about nutritious drinks? She’s generally a big fan of fruit and veg, nuts, etc. Thank you!

posted by ukdanae to Food & Drink (44 answers total)

At 86 and stage IV breast cancer and losing weight... I don't know that it's *nutritious* exactly, but is she tolerating dairy? Could you feed her milkshakes?
posted by joycehealy at 2:11 PM on August 11, 2021 [20 favorites]

Things that go in smoothies: tofu, tahini, nut butters

Things that help with appetite: exercise, fresh air and sunshine, being happy, zinc, caffeine

Best blender that won't burn out: vitamix
posted by aniola at 2:14 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Not nutritious but will add calories: ice cream and melted ice cream? And/or adding a heaping spoonful of peanut butter.
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:17 PM on August 11, 2021 [11 favorites]

I was also going to say a nice tasty milkshake. You could make it thicker or thinner depending on her preferences, and maybe experiment with some powder that has some vitamins in it.

I'm very sorry about your grandmother. I hope you have a lovely visit with her.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:17 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

I really enjoy the Premier Protein caramel shakes they sell at Costco, sometimes blended with a banana or other fruit, or peanut butter. It's easy and tastes good.
posted by answergrape at 2:19 PM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

As far as protein powders: my kid likes Isopure Zero Carb Unflavored 25g Protein, mixed into fruit smoothies. I like Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Protein Powder, Double Rich Chocolate, which I mix with milk.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:20 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

You can get pasteurized egg whites and add them to all kinds of things -- it's fine to drink them raw. Add them to her milkshakes or smoothies.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:21 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine with breast cancer ended up enjoying miso soup, when other things tasted bad to her or the textures felt unpleasant. I know that isn't an all-in-one nutrition dose, but if she likes broths, she might want to try it. Definitely won't have the problem of being too thick.
posted by theatro at 2:26 PM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Loving all of these suggestions so far and commenting to add - definitely up for stuff that isn’t nutritious and adds calories too!
posted by ukdanae at 2:28 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Pot helps with nausea and hunger. It is a legitimate medical resource. Chocolate shake with small amount of tincture(or edible), ideally in the evening or when she naps. Just a small amount, being stoned may not be pleasant for her. Today's pot is very strong.

Sometimes if people are sick, real dairy is off-putting, so get almond, oat and cashew milks to try.
posted by theora55 at 2:28 PM on August 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

I like the Premiere Protein drinks. Not that thick. I happen to like the chocolate best, but they are all ok. If Ensure or the Premiere Protein are too thick, add water. They dilute fast.

I think I would also consider high calorie drinks, not just protein. A milkshake sounds great.
posted by AugustWest at 2:28 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

What about thinned out soups? A lovely butternut or a creamy tomato, thinned with a bit of extra broth to a sippable consistency. Maybe some fortified chicken broth if cream is too much.
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 2:29 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

If she doesn't end up liking premade things or protein powders, whole-milk Greek yogurt adds protein and fat. I mix it with soy milk (cuts the sourness better than dairy milk) and fruit and sugar to taste.
posted by needs more cowbell at 2:31 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yes, do some soups! Cream of mushroom, tomato bisque, broccoli cheddar - all easy to blend and can be consumed with a straw or spoon. No cream or butter limits unless they bother her.

Having only sweet stuff gets old, even if it's tasty.
posted by shoesietart at 2:35 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

When I was in your shoes, I literally drove through every Steak 'n' Shake I passed on the way to Nana's. We spent a lot of time drinking milkshakes. I have also heard of people cutting Ensure with milk or almond milk etc. Also, temperature sometimes matters a lot----if you get it to a tolerable thickness, can she drink it ice cold?

Also this old thread might help. Specifically somebody pointed to https://theultimatelife.net/the-ultimate-meal/

[Something that wasn't available then, and might be available now for your grandmother is medical marijuana. For many it helps with nausea, pain, and appetite stimulation.

(I realize "weed and milkshakes" is not the answer to a question about healthy drinks. On the flip side, if I make it 86, the grandchild bringing me weed and milkshakes is the favorite. I wish you and your family all the best)]
posted by adekllny at 2:38 PM on August 11, 2021 [22 favorites]

My grandmother hated Ensure--hated it--but loved Boost.
posted by phunniemee at 2:46 PM on August 11, 2021 [6 favorites]

Anything high in fat! If it's high in fat, you get more calories for your efforts. Cheese! Blended blueberries and cream! Popcorn covered in oil and salt!

What was a special treat when she was a child?

Quinoa is higher in protein and minerals than other grains. Might she get excited about it because it's new and different?

Juice.
posted by aniola at 2:47 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Add cashew butter or blended tofu to any creamy soups.
posted by aniola at 2:49 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also--toward the end when my grandma was refusing all other food, here are the things she ate:

- watermelon
- cheddar cheese on club crackers
- starbucks prepackaged mocha flavor frappuccinos
posted by phunniemee at 2:50 PM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

You can drink apple sauce with a straw and thin it out with more juice (would recommend the no sugar added). Lots of broths, stocks, and soups are drinkable. They even make the on-the-go kind with a cup lid. As someone with nausea +1 for anything is better than nothing and investigate meds/thc. I've found stuff really needs to have flavor, usually salt or sugar to get past the nausea for me.
posted by Crystalinne at 2:54 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

When we were doing at home hospice care for a stage four parent last year, the most popular thing was cream cheese, nut butter, chocolate protein powder, and vitamins in milkshakes. Sweets were one of the few things that still tasted good until the end.
posted by foxtongue at 3:01 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

If she loves fruit, maybe make smoothies with ice cream instead of yogurt for some extra fat and calories. (Or you could experiment with frozen fruit, heavy cream, and some kind of sweetener for a thinner drink.) Homemade applesauce is really delicious and easy to make if you don't mind peeling and chopping--you could make a big batch, puree it smooth, and then freeze it in portions.
posted by theotherdurassister at 3:01 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Vanilla ice cream & milkshakes.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 3:24 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I wonder if the method of ingestion matters for her? Sipping directly from the can of ensure may be a chore, but perhaps having a straw to sip through will make things easier? I often freeze milkshakes when I get them (for example In-N-Out's shakes are good but waaaay too much for me to finish in one sitting), and eat them like ice cream.

Instant miso soup packets, Korean miyuk (seaweed broth that is the traditional postpartum recovery food) packs and similar also might be an easy meal for her if she likes savory broths. I echo others in this thread who think that only sweet/fruity drinks may get tiresome.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:03 PM on August 11, 2021

You need to make her existing meals more calorie-dense.

So slathering butter on vegetables, adding cream and butter to mashed potatoes, toast dripping with butter (or peanut butter or whatever). Cream in soup. Cheese on pasta. Cream in oatmeal. Whatever she likes to eat, add cheese, butter or cream to it wherever possible. Cafe au lait not white americanos. Croissants not toast. Etc.

This will also make it tastier - restaurants use a hell of a lot more cream and butter than you would ever use in home cooking.
posted by tinkletown at 4:09 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Potato leek soup with plenty of butter and cream can be blended very smooth and sipped while warm. Thin it out with flavorful stock to get a thickness she is good with. Variations include sweet potatoes instead of regular ones, adding in other root veggies like parsnips or turnips, roasting the leeks a bit to get a deeper flavor, using different stocks like carrot and onion stock for sweeter notes, beef or roasted chicken stock for richer tastes and more protein, simple soaked kombu for a very clean taste if she is having issues with that. If you have an especially good blender, leave some of the potato skins in for nutrients and flavor.

I love a nut butter and honey sandwich on toast as a sweet snack. Sometimes I cut the crusts off and make little triangles and have it with tea and pretend I’m fancy. I grab those squeeze packets of nut butters because I don’t like peanut butter enough to keep the good stuff in the house before it goes off, so I have almond butter, sunflower seed butter, sometimes hazelnut chocolate butter, etc. Almond butter and honey smoothie with oat milk, maybe?
posted by Mizu at 4:15 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

I made my father milkshakes - coffee ice cream and ensure - far tastier than straight ensure - and more calories. He could manage with a straw.
posted by leslies at 4:20 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

When my grandma was going through chemo towards the end she was on a similar diet and hated it, not just for the texture but because her sense of taste was wrecked by the treatments and she had a sore throat/mouth a lot of the time. Definitely try lots of things but make sure she feels able to be honest with you -- my grandma tended to hide the pain she was in because she didn't want to cause a fuss, so she was actually eating much less than we thought she was. Grains and harsh textures may be difficult for her.

I think at this point the experimentation is key. Find something she can tolerate and, more importantly, enjoys, no matter what it is, and stock up on that. Keeping her eating is the most important thing, even if it's not necessarily "nutritious" in the strictest sense.
posted by fight or flight at 4:39 PM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Soylent?
posted by ASlackerPestersMums at 5:17 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

When I had strep throat, one of the only things I could swallow was avocado. It would take me like a half an hour to eat an avocado. But omg I was so grateful for avocados.
posted by aniola at 5:39 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Mom likes Boost ok. Similar-aged friend likes Orgain. Both are on more ice cream than they used to be for weight gain, so agree with others that anything she actually Likes can be a help.
posted by ldthomps at 6:45 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Medicinal marijuana might help, but if your grandma is like me, the taste, even if masked somewhat by baked goods, will upset her stomach. There's also a possibility that even small doses will make her feel anxious or agitated. Don't rule it out if she's down to try, but proceed cautiously.

I love aniola's avocado suggestion and also recommend avocado milkshakes.

Definitely try other brands of protein drink. After my mom had major gut rearranging surgery last year, her weight dropped precipitously because she couldn't eat but also couldn't stomach Ensure or Boost. Her surgeon ended up suggesting Kate Farms ready to drink protein shakes. They come in the usual chocolate and vanilla flavors, but they also have a coffee flavor which is actually kind of good. I bet it would be legitimately tasty blended up with chocolate ice cream or froyo. I believe they're slightly higher in calories than Ensure, too, so even if she can't finish one in a sitting, she'd at least be getting more calories than she is right now. They are a little thick, and I'm trying to think of something you could use to thin them out without adding so much volume that she gets full too fast. Maybe whole milk or coconut milk?
posted by easy, lucky, free at 6:53 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh, all of the peanut butter suggestions have reminded me of these pouches I've been eyeing on Amazon. They're just but butter and fruit puree in various combinations. I have not yet tried them but they sound kind of tasty.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 6:55 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Another vote for milkshakes... I think vanilla shakes were the only calories he got for awhile. I know years prior he liked malted milkshakes.
posted by tinker at 7:14 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

My mom lost a lot of weight during the pandemic due to malnourishment and cancer and i've been giving her shakes with meal replacement powders from Orgain, KOS and Vega. We use whole milk and add frozen fruit and/or avocado, which she likes.
posted by softlord at 7:33 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I’m on medication that reduces my appetite and tried more than a dozen bottled shakes, and Orgain Nutrition Shakes were the winner by leaps & bounds: real sugar (so more calories and no funky metallic aftertaste), thin and more palatable texture, and a much better nutrient profile. I also drink it with ice out of a travel mug (so it stays cold as I sip slowly) and with a straw, which for some reason really helps.

I nth the recs for thin blended soups of basically any kind. And have her try drinking it also out of a travel mug—it might help her to try eating more slowly than she’s used to, and that way it’ll stay warm. Also, homemade smoothies are great, but so are pre-bottled (Naked brand, etc), if she feels tired and not up to the whole blender situation when you aren’t there.

(Also, it’s not what you asked for but just in case, I also find bland food more palatable, so I eat a fully-loaded but still made pretty thin oatmeal—steel cut oats with sugar, peanut butter, flax meal, and Orgain protein powder, made with double the water to oats ratio—and can get through that okay if I go slow. Same for bland snacks like graham crackers or, even better, popcorn. If it’s possible for her to nibble a bowl of oily kernels over the course of the entire day, she could really add some calories and fiber.)
posted by CtrlAltDelete at 8:07 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Similar to shakes and such - did your grandmother grow up drinking ovaltine/ horlicks/ milo/malts and might have some nostalgic goodwill towards malted beverages?

I recently rediscovered horlicks/ milo dissolved in sweetened soy milk (iced!). Tasty, but that ended up being a lot of excess calories.

Cold soups? Gazpacho or chilled borscht?
posted by porpoise at 8:08 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

When my sister was in that situation, one of the only things she would eat were those little fruit cups like mandarin orange segments in Jell-O. They seemed to be light enough that it was easier for her swallow, and the taste was bright enough that it cut through a lot of the taste issues she had and wasn't too terrible.

When I had my own problems like that, literally the only thing I could stomach was watermelon chunks. That might still be too "solid" for her, but it might not hurt to see what she thinks. I wish you the best, this is really hard.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 10:05 PM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

I haven't read all the responses but when my mom was sick she liked the Boost juice-like drink way better than any of the milkshake type drinks.

Also, there exists a book about feeding people with cancer called "what to eat when you don't feel like eating" which might be of interest.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:12 AM on August 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Blending avocado into milk only adds a tiny bit of body and a tiny bit of flavor. So you could add one into her milkshakes pretty easily, get some good fiber and vitamins and a good chunk of calories added pretty easily.
posted by Night_owl at 5:32 AM on August 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

For my SO undergoing Chemo, I make smoothies and milkshakes using addins likes Isopure Zero Carb unflavored protein powder, full fat yougurt/greek too, powdered peanut butter, milkshakes with ice cream or oatmilk if dairy is not sitting well. He is also on the antidepressant Mirtazapine (low dose) specifically to increase his appetite, Delta 8 also helps if that is available in your state.
WE keep his go to food choices always available. bananas, ready to eat melon, and prepped kiwi as he likes those almost all the time. And the junky pastries he likes. He does eat healthier things but they are hit and miss so being adaptable day to day helps
posted by ReiFlinx at 5:47 AM on August 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah, Ensure, Boost, etc are all pretty vile. I’ve had success in getting people to drink it by ‘doctoring’ it up - getting plain/unflavored/vanilla and adding chocolate syrup or powder. Mix it with ice - thins it and chills it reducing perceived flavors. Also, a small splash of rum (if she likes that flavor) for a nutritious nog. I prefer fruit smoothies with yogurt and almond milk.

As far as cannabinoids, beware of paradoxical reactions in the elderly with anxiety, agitation, and confusion.
posted by sudogeek at 6:13 AM on August 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Vega meal replacement protein powder is expensive but I find the taste very inoffensive, and the overall nutritional profile is pretty good. I went through a period of severe nausea and lack of appetite and I found it was less off-putting than other options. I just blend it with frozen berry mix and either non-dairy milk (oat or almond) or just water, so it's easy to make a smoothie with a magic bullet. Supposedly you can also just mix it with water or juice and shake it but I haven't tried that.

Have you tried having her drink things with a straw? You can get the reusable metal ones. If it's very cold that might help also.
posted by lookoutbelow at 1:45 PM on August 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Dad actively likes Owyn, but he's picky about the flavor (and they aren't cheap). He likes the dark chocolate and vanilla best, but there are other options. You could try a flavor or two bought one-at-a-time, and if it works, then buy it in bulk (slightly cheaper).
He also likes to mix some of the chocolate with vanilla ice cream; I think the ice cream is from some highly filtered milk so it digests more easily.

My real recommendation though is to see if you can get a consult with a good nutritionist, someone expert in this specific sort of care; a good one can be life-changing.
posted by nat at 11:10 AM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]