Is it Possible for Seniors to Eat 30 Plants a Week?
Home care assistance can help seniors eat more plant-based foods for better nutrition and longevity.
Eating more plant-based foods regularly is something that doctors recommend to most patients, but especially to seniors. Sometimes seniors get bogged down in the details when it comes to those kinds of recommendations, though. And recent recommendations from gut-health experts to eat at least 30 plants a week can feel overwhelming. Help from home care assistance can make a difference, though, and it just might be possible for seniors to eat a lot more plant-based foods every week.
What Is 30 Plants a Week All About?
A 2018 study at the University of Southern California San Diego found that people who ate 30 or more different kinds of plants per week had a mixture of gut microbes that were incredibly diverse. This matters because healthy and diverse gut microbes lead to a healthier gut and therefore a healthier person.
More and more people are talking about eating more plants each week, with a goal of 30 different plants during that time.
Plant-based Food Ideas
When most people think about plant-based foods, they tend to think only of fruits and vegetables. But herbs count, and so do nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains. Other foods that count can be surprising. Dark chocolate that has 70% or more cocoa solids is made with seeds, so it technically counts as a plant-based food.
Variety is the best idea, and there are lots of different options that can be delicious and healthy.
Seniors Can Decide What Counts
There are some hard and fast rules, like brown rice, lentils, and chickpeas, which all count as plant-based foods. However, seniors can also make some decisions about some of the things that count toward their plant-based food goals.
Spices and herbs technically count, but some seniors might opt not to include those. There are other gray areas, too, like whether green and yellow bell peppers are different plants or count as one type of pepper. They technically can be different plants because different chemicals and nutrients are found in different colored plants, but seniors might want to count all bell peppers as one food out of the 30 per week.
There’s a lot of room for preferences.
Tracking Can Help, Especially at First
Meal tracking can help seniors in a variety of ways, especially if they’re dealing with health issues and need to pay attention to how their diet affects how they feel.
Home care assistance providers can help seniors to keep track of the foods they’re eating and other details they want to track. They can also help seniors to stay on target with their goals when it comes to eating as much plant-based foods as they would like to eat per week.
Home Care Assistance Makes Meal Planning Easy
Planning helps to make this big goal a lot easier. Ultimately, eating 30 unique plants per week breaks down to five unique plant-based foods each day. Home care assistance can help seniors plan out what plant-based foods they want to eat and incorporate those into meals and snacks during the week.
They can also help with shopping for those foods and making the meals that seniors enjoy.
Eating 30 different plants per week might seem like an impossible goal to reach, especially for seniors, but it might not be so complicated. Home care assistance providers can help with all sorts of tasks, as well, ensuring seniors have what they need to have the best possible quality of life.
If you or someone you know needs Home Care Assistance in Mobile, AL, please contact the friendly caregivers at Hughes Home Care. We provide quality and affordable care for your elderly loved ones in our community. Serving Mobile & Baldwin County. Call us today at (251) 517-9901
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