A soft food diet includes soft and easy to chew and swallow food. You may need to follow a soft food diet due to different types of surgeries in the neck, stomach, or head. You should consult a dietician to get a proper idea about the diet plan.
Let’s check out the foods that you can eat and you should avoid when you are on a soft diet.
Foods to eat
Soup
Soup is one of the popular foods included in a soft food diet. You can have either blended soups or broth. It is easy to make food at your home. You can add any vegetable to the soup. It let you enjoy low-sodium broth with cooked veggies. You must avoid spicy seasonings like chili powder as they can irritate your stomach.
Fruits and Veggies
Fruits and veggies are suitable ingredients for a soft food diet. There is a number of soft, skinless fruits like bananas, melons, and stone fruit to add to the diet. Canned fruits, baked fruits, salad greens, and applesauce are a great addition to a soft food diet.
Diary products
Dairy products contain lots of protein that are essential for your body. You can add milk or milk drinks like a milkshake, yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and frozen yogurt without nuts or fruit.
Meat and other protein sources
Eggs are a great source of protein. You can add eggs by cooking, scrambling, or poaching. Moist, tender meat, fish, or poultry that is chopped or ground into small pieces supply protein for your soft diet.
Dessert
You can add dessert to your soft food diet. Jelly, Pudding, very moist cake, mousse, and pudding are some compatible desserts for a soft diet.
What do you need to know when preparing soft food?
Don’t swallow big chunks of food. So cut them into small pieces. You can cut them into pieces of smaller or half the inches. When you are preparing veggies cook them until they become soft. A food processor will help to soften them and make them easy to swallow. You can strain soups to remove larger pieces of meat and veggies.
Foods to avoid
Any food that is hard and difficult to swallow falls into the avoiding food list during a soft diet. As a person following a soft food diet, you should avoid them.
You can use a blender to blend fruit juice. Crushing fruit pieces into small pieces makes them easy to swallow.
- Starches – Loaves of bread have tough crusts like French bread, sourdough bread, and bagels.
- Popcorn
- Cereals with hard shells, cake, bread with dried fruit, nuts, and other seeds.
- Taco shells, corn, potato, and tortilla chips.
- Vegetables – Vegetables that are difficult to crush or mesh-like raw and hard vegetables. Carrots, celery, cauliflower, and broccoli.
- Cooked fruit has seeds and skins.
- Stringy fruits like mango and pineapple.
- Diary, protein foods, and meats
- Ice cream or yogurt with nuts, granola, and coconut.
- Peanut butter
- Tough meats like sausages, hot dogs, bratwurst, and dry meats like beef jerky
- Casseroles have big pieces of meat.
To Sum Up
A soft food diet is easy to make. You should always consult the doctor before proceeding with the diet.
