ALS Diet - Dietician/Nutritionist
The dietician’s primary considerations are to keep the individual’s quality of life as high as possible by maintaining safe and adequate nutrition and hydration at each dietary texture and consistency level, in order to prevent life-threatening nutritional deficits from developing.
The dietitian may assess/evaluate the following:
- functional abilities (relative to the person’s ability to self-feed or administer tube feedings)
- nutritional status and present intake
The dietician may recommend the following strategies:
- appropriate changes in food texture and consistency (this might be done in conjunction with the speech-language pathologist)
- appropriate methods of food preparation
- substitutions for hard-to-manage foods
- meals of a manageable size and frequency
- strategies for improving nutritional deficiencies
People with ALS, family members and other healcare providers (ex Home Care, VON staff) should give feedback on how altered foods and dietary changes are tolerated and accepted
Alternative methods of nutrition should be discussed before intervention is necessary.