Study On The Comparison Of Different Home Cooking Methods Of Strong-fiber-sense Vegetables Which Are Suitable For The Elderly With Masticatory Disorders

With the development of society,ageing is becoming a major trend.The population of the elderly in China has a large base and a fast growth rate.With physiological function weakening,the elderly suffer from masticatory and swallowing disorders.However,current researches on dietary disorders focus on swallowing disorders,rather than masticatory disorders.Therefore,many old people with masticatory disorders are treated as dysphagia and often eat runny food,which weakens the chewing and digestive ability of the elderly.Masticatory disorders need more attention.Traditional cooking can soften the texture of food.However,the further the processing of food is,the more nutrients are lost.This paper investigates chewing problems among the elderly.Celery which is hard to chew and owns a high eating rate among the elderly is chosen as the research object.Besides,this paper also explores a family-suitable cooking method which not only can retain nutrients to the extreme extent but also can soften the texture of celery.At last,the explored cooking method is also applied to other vegetables with strong fiber sense.Hoping this paper will provide some reference to the family-suitable cooking methods of food for the elderly.The main research contents and results are as follows.Firstly,a field survey was conducted to know the chewing and swallowing ability of the old and food texture suitable for the elderly with chewing disorders.78% of the old people investigated have no pathological swallowing disorders but only suffer from chewing disorders.In addition,57% of the elderly with chewing disorders only need softened food.Food with strong fiber sense may often cause chewing disorders among the elderly.Celery,as a representative of strong fiber sense vegetable,ranks first in the list of foods with high consuming frequency and chewing difficulty.Then taking celery as the research object,the sensory evaluation method of chewing difficulty was established and the texture factors affecting the chewing difficulty were investigated.Two levels of chewing difficulty degree were obtained.It was found that the chewing difficulty of celery was mainly provided by the internal and external fibers.Internal fibers provide the hardness,while the external fibers provide the toughness.The softening level which scores 6 on hardness and 2.5 on toughness can meet the dietary needs of 63% of the elderly with masticatory disorders,while the high softening level which scores 2 on hardness and 0 on toughness can meet the dietary needs of 87% of the elderly with masticatory disorders.Secondly,the relationship among micro structure and chewing difficulty was explored.Besides,the influence of cooking methods on dietary fiber is also studied.It was found that the thick-horned tissues which were originally closely connected with the surrounding tissues shrank and gradually protruded outward,which results in a decline in the toughness of celery.At the significance level of 0.05,the correlation coefficient between toughness and thick-horned tissues is 0.714.The hardness of celery is mainly provided by its parenchyma cells.Parenchyma cells were destroyed severely at the later stage of boiling and some of the cell walls disappeared,resulting in a significant decrease in hardness.At the significance level of 0.05,the correlation coefficient between hardness and parenchyma cell size under stir frying and steaming is 0.892.In addition,steaming treatment is the best way to retain the content of dietary fiber and keep the quality of dietary fiber under the same chewing gradient.Finally,the effects of cooking methods on antioxidant substances were explored.By improving the cooking methods,the nutrients of celery were retained to the maximum under the same degree of chewing difficulty.The improved cooking methods were applied to other vegetables with strong fiber sense.It comes that steaming treatment is the most beneficial one for retaining vitamin C and polyphenols.However,steaming is not good for chlorophyll retention.The most important factor affecting chlorophyll retention of celery is pH.The method that soaking celery for 5 minutes by 0.5% baking soda in solution before steaming not only ensures the intake of dietary fiber and antioxidants under the premise of softening the texture,but also possesses a high consumer acceptance.In addition,the improved cooking method has been effectively used in strong-fiber-sense vegetables with high organic acid content.Therefore,the improved cooking method is suitable for the elderly with masticatory disorders.