Savorease Blog
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Functional Eating Practices and Functional Texture Design in Dysphagia Management
While safety in swallowing has historically driven dysphagia management, there is a growing recognition that function, not just safety, must define the standard of care. This includes a shift toward functional eating practices and a closer look at functional texture design.
In this blog, we explore what these terms mean, why they matter, and how emerging tools like Crispy Melts—Savorease’s dissolvable solid supplement—are changing the way we support people with dysphagia.
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Rethinking Ultra-Processed Foods in Dysphagia Management
Dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, affects an estimated 9 million adults in the United States and is especially prevalent in older adults and individuals with neurological, oncological, or complex chronic conditions. One emerging area of concern in this space is the role of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in oral nutritional supplements and snack products tailored for people with dysphagia. While UPFs have long been tolerated in clinical nutrition because of their convenience and caloric density, we must now ask: are we solving one problem while potentially worsening others?
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PD Blog Series 3: How to Tell if Swallowing is a Problem: Screening and Testing for Dysphagia
Swallowing difficulties, or dysphagia, can significantly impact a person’s health, nutrition, and quality of life. Early detection is crucial, especially for individuals with conditions like Parkinson’s disease or stroke, where dysphagia often goes unnoticed in the early stages. Here’s how screening and diagnostic testing can help identify swallowing problems and guide appropriate care.
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PD Blog Series 1: How Parkinson's Disease Affects Swallowing - Dysphagia
Parkinson’s disease is often associated with tremors, stiffness, and movement difficulties, but one lesser-known yet critical symptom is dysphagia — difficulty swallowing. Though it might not be the first symptom that comes to mind, swallowing problems affect up to 80% of people with Parkinson’s disease, often leading to serious health risks if left unaddressed.
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PD Blog Series 2. Swallowing Impairments in Parkinson's Disease: The Impact on The Three Phases of the Swallow
Swallowing difficulties, also known as dysphagia, are a common yet often overlooked complication of Parkinson’s disease (PD). These challenges can affect any or all three phases of swallowing: oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal. Understanding the signs and implications of dysphagia in PD is essential for ensuring safe eating and maintaining quality of life.
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Finding Relief From Dry Mouth
Everyone experiences dry mouth. That cotton ball sensation in your mouth that makes your tongue feel twice its’ size. Speech becomes an effort and swallowing difficult. Most healthy adults can trace back the cause to the common culprits- alcohol, caffeine or smoking. Taking a few restorative glasses of water is often the cure. However, 13-28% of older adults face this as a chronic issue, called xerostomia, every day. This number can increase to an alarming 60% in long term care. Loss of quality of life stemming from reduced food enjoyment is a reality. Also, loss of oral health and ultimately overall health raises the need for us to share information regarding this condition across disciplines.
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What Is Dysphagia? Understanding the Basics
Dysphagia is the medical term for difficulty swallowing—a condition that can affect people of all ages but is especially common among older adults and individuals with certain medical conditions. Swallowing is something most of us take for granted, but for those with dysphagia, even a simple meal can become a significant challenge.
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Liberalizing the Diet with Transitional Foods: How to Measure Foods in This Category?
Implementing the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI) criteria to all the menus in facility care is a daunting task. It is also serving as an eye-opener for many speech-language pathologists and dietitians. For example, soft scrambled eggs, that may have previously been included on a puree menu at some facilities, are now being re-categorized more appropriately to a higher level.
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The Art of Enjoying Food: The Interplay Between Taste and Texture
For individuals managing dysphagia and feeding disorders, the joy of eating can often feel elusive. As caregivers and healthcare providers, we strive to create nourishing and pleasurable eating experiences that honor both safety and satisfaction. This month, we’re exploring a fundamental question: What matters more in food enjoyment—taste or texture?
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Can Sugar Be a Risk Factor in Cancer Progression?
Discover how sugar contributes to chronic inflammation and impairs recovery from serious diseases. Learn about anti-inflammatory diets, such as the Mediterranean and MIND diets, that can improve health outcomes, especially for patients with dysphagia
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Oral Sensory Strategies for Children with Autism
This comprehensive guide explores various tools, techniques, and the role of occupational therapy in enhancing communication, behavior, and self-regulation for kids facing sensory processing challenges.
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Sugar, Inflammation, and Diet: Supporting Recovery in Stroke and Other Diseases
Discover how sugar contributes to chronic inflammation and impairs recovery from serious diseases. Learn about anti-inflammatory diets, such as the Mediterranean and MIND diets, that can improve health outcomes, especially for patients with dysphagia
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Tasty and Healthy Soft Food Recipes After Dental Surgery
Dental surgery can be a daunting experience. The recovery process often requires a shift in dietary habits.This is where soft foods come into play. They are crucial for healing and comfort after oral procedures.But adhering to a soft food diet doesn't mean compromising on taste or nutrition. With a little creativity, you can enjoy delicious and nutritious meals.This guide offers a variety of soft food recipes tailored for post-dental surgery recovery.
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Boost Brain Health with MIND Diet Foods For Dementia
This article will guide you through the key foods of the MIND diet. We'll explore how to adapt these foods for those with swallowing difficulties. We'll also introduce nutritious snacks, like Crispy Melts, that can enhance food enjoyment for those with major illnesses.
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Introducing First Solid Foods - What to Know
Introducing solid foods to your child is an exciting milestone. It marks the beginning of a new journey in their feeding adventures. This transition can present challenges, especially for picky eaters or those with texture aversions.
Let’s dive in and make this journey enjoyable for both you and your little one!
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Navigating Bariatric Diets: Puree Snack Solutions
Navigating a bariatric diet can be challenging. It requires careful selection of foods that are not only nutritious but also easy to digest.
Finding the right puree snacks is not always straightforward. It involves understanding the dietary needs, taste preferences, and food digestibility.
This guide aims to simplify that process. It offers practical advice on choosing high-quality, bariatric-friendly puree snacks that promote gut health.
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Soft Diet Snacks During Stroke Recovery
Caring for a loved one recovering from a stroke can be challenging, especially when they experience difficulty swallowing—a condition known as dysphagia.
Dysphagia can greatly affect a person’s ability to enjoy food, often leading to nutritional deficiencies that can slow recovery and impact overall quality of life.
But there’s hope.
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Dysphagia Meal Solutions: Tasty Pureed Recipes & Tips
Dysphagia can be a challenging condition as it affects the ability to swallow, making meal times a potential struggle.
This can create stress around food preparation for a person with dysphagia and the caregiver.
We want to give some creative suggestions to ease the burden and make your next meal appetizing and nutritious.
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Why Add Medically Tailored Dissolvable Solids to Inpatient Food Service Menus?
For many healthcare facilities, the shift from the traditional dysphagia diet framework to onboarding the IDDSI (International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative) standards has created new opportunities for improving the safety and enjoyment of meals for patients with swallowing disorders, but can require a lot of time and interdisciplinary communication. The IDDSI framework, which categorizes foods into levels (0-7) based on texture and consistency, has made it easier to test and align food to the needs of patients on puree diets or with more advanced texture requirements
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Understanding Transitional Foods in Dysphagia Management: Behavior in the mouth defines use
Transitional foods have become a vital part of dysphagia management, offering innovative solutions for individuals with swallowing difficulties. These foods, which were formally defined by the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI), rapidly change texture in response to moisture or temperature, making them ideal for individuals with dysphagia.
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What is the term for fear of swallowing?
Phagophobia, also known as the fear of swallowing, often stems from swallowing anxiety or a traumatic experience related to swallowing. Often the underlying fear is a fear of choking. For individuals with phagophobia, the act of eating can provoke intense eating anxiety, leading to avoidance of food or liquids and severely impacting their overall well-being.
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5 Ways to Improve Support for People with Dysphagia
Today, we highlight the importance of emotional support for individuals living with dysphagia and their loved ones. We need to break down the walls of isolation created by this condition through communication, education and support. These are also the building blocks to effect change in communities, facilities and society at large.
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5 Changes To Improve Food Intake with Dysphagia͏͏͏͏
It is reported that 39% of people with dysphagia are at risk of malnutrition and in nursing homes this risk can reach up to 66%. These are really concerning statistics. With a diagnosis of dysphagia, not only does a person with dysphagia or a caregiver need to focus on learning how to modify solid food textures but also potentially thickening liquids as well.
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Dining Health Defined
Although dysphagia affects up to 590 million people worldwide, it is still poorly understood and often overlooked. It can occur as a result of well known medical conditions, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative disorders, head and neck cancer, and muscular disorders. The focus of the article is to raise awareness of the profound impacts that dysphagia can have on a person's health and wellness and that of caregivers too
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Why do Savorease Therapeutic Foods fit into the ALS diet?
Eating is one of the most important pleasures of life that is often taken away from a person with progression of ALS. When food preparation and the dining experience becomes a struggle for the ALS sufferer, and can lead to eating anxiety and reduced quality of life. It can be an emotional struggle for the family as well. Understanding the distinct challenges with ALS can allow caregivers to find the right food solutions to bring comfort and energy to their loved one.
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Finding Relief From Dry Mouth
Everyone experiences dry mouth. That cotton ball sensation in your mouth that makes your tongue feel twice its’ size. Speech becomes an effort and swallowing difficult. Most healthy adults can trace back the cause to the common culprits- alcohol, caffeine or smoking. Taking a few restorative glasses of water is often the cure. However, 13-28% of older adults face this as a chronic issue, called xerostomia, every day. This number can increase to an alarming 60% in long term care. Loss of quality of life stemming from reduced food enjoyment is a reality. Also, loss of oral health and ultimately overall health raises the need for us to share information regarding this condition across disciplines.
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Solid Meltables Made for Pediatric Feeding Disorders
For infants and children with PFD, every bite of food can be painful, scary, or impossible, potentially impeding nutrition, development, growth, and overall well-being. Finding food that they are willing to eat and that are safe for them is the challenge for SLPs.
Although purée foods offer a nutritional solution, typical purée diets have been shown to contain up to 50% less protein than regular diets. (Vucea, 2017; Dahl, 2007). The goal to graduate individuals to firmer textures and expand their dietary options offers health, and psychosocial benefits that can’t be underestimated.
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The Magical Ingredient: Aquafaba
What makes our Savorease Crispy Melts so special? Aquafaba is a key ingredient in our Crispy Melts, making them vegan and gluten free. But do you know what aquafaba is?
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OSU Shares the Inside Story of Savorease in "The Pursuit of an Impossible Food"
Difficulty swallowing affects more than 15 Million Americans. Sweet shakes, purées and even feeding tubes can be their "new normal".
The pleasure is removed from the eating experience.
We have worked hard to change that. It was a challenging pursuit that led to the development of Savorease Snack Foods. Finally the textures and tastes people crave when they can't swallow properly.
We are proud to share the official video showing the collaborative journey that made the impossible possible
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Dysphagia, Malnutrition and Savorease
While pureed and mechanically soft food options are available to satiate a dysphagic individual’s hunger, ready-made snack options are often limited to shakes and puddings, which can be unenjoyable over time due to lack of texture variety. In addition, lack of mastication can negatively affect cognition over time, which may be an impactful consequence especially for those in cognitive decline with conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. It has been shown that improving the flavor of foods can improve caloric intake and body weight in nursing-home patients. In conclusion, the loss of food enjoyment contributes to the risk of malnourishment in the elderly and ultimately decreases quality of life. Addressing these factors can improve the lives of this population.