meal ideas for someone who can't chew??

kikiboniki · January 2015

Hey all, I got lingual braces put on yesterday, and long story short, my molars no longer meet in the back. My bottom teeth hit the brackets of the top teeth and there isn't anything to be done until my bite corrects itself, which I've heard is 3-6 months....

So, its soft foods. I literally can't chew anything!
Do you have good ideas for food to actually make and keep me full? So far I've had protein shakes, soups, hot cereal, and yogurt

neanderthin · January 2015

Purée vegetables and cooked meats if you like and apparently it also increases satiety.

nixx136 · January 2015

Had a similar experience. I did herbalife shakes, did a lot of juicing. My tmj dr kent me a book called the I can't chew cook book. You can purchase it at amazon.

RodaRose · January 2015

Baby food if you are in a hurry.
Also try these depending on how your mouth feels on a certain day:
Very well done (over cooked) moist mac and cheese or any pasta, moist meat loaf, crab cakes, stuffing, fluffy biscuits, pudding, bread pudding, pancakes, muffins, scrambled eggs, saltines (they kind of melt on the top of your mouth) apple sauce, mashed bananas, mashed potatoes, (Stay away from foods with seeds.)

I remember making regular chicken and rice dinner and adding extra boxed broth and putting it in the blender. A good food processor would have made it easier but my regular recipe worked with the extra broth/ liquid. I put it in a bowl and ate it like a thick soup.

It is good to eat ice cream and frozen yogurt.

ruqayyahsmum · January 2015

after i had surgery i had to go with a blended then soft food diet

on softs fish pie with plenty of sauce, cottage pie with extra gravy, tuna pasta bake made with the tiny pasta shapes and extra sauce, scrambled eggs with a creamy mushroom sauce etc were all easy savory options as small mouthfuls slide right on down with no chewing

pudding wise mousses were good, jelly and ice cream slides well too

if you do blend meats, fish etc be sure to add plenty of sauce. the hospital gave me some after surgery, didnt go well as too dry to swallow properly. set off vomiting and so much pain i had to be given a shot of morphine and put back to bed

HaggisWhisperer · January 2015

Can you manage finely ground meat - if the stuff you get in the supermarket is too course maybe it would be worth buying yourself a decent mincer to use over the next few months? There are some teeny tiny soup pastas that you can buy - like stelline, or orzo. You could add those to your smooth pasta sauces or soups (orzo is often baked as well). Mashed root veg, risotto, lentil dahl (loads of variations for that and it would be an easy source of protein if the ground meat option isn't working). RodaRose's suggestion of scrambled egg is another good one for protein - you could mix in some other ingredients to that for variation and to make it more substantial. Well flaked tinned tuna mixed with a little mayo. Fishcakes in general. Fish pie with a mashed potato top (or a grated potato top for that matter - its easier to use less potato). Mashed banana. If you need a treat, a skinned banana baked in the oven with a tsp of honey and a little rum (cover with foil when cooking) served with a little cream/ice cream/whatever is absolutely wonderful (not a terribly helpful idea from a weight loss point of view though certainly not as calorific as cheesecake!)

I had a problem with the bite of my back molars on one side a few years ago I had to be really careful to chew slowly and gently or it could be very painful when I lost concentration.

Need2Exerc1se · January 2015

If you can stand the look of it, you can put anything in the blender and make it edible without chewing. When my daughter was young she was in an accident and couldn't chew. I put spaghetti with meat sauce in the blender for her. It looked somewhat like canned dog food, but she loved it.

melimomTARDIS · January 2015

baby food rice cereal, mixed with some a protein shake, and thinned to a desired consistency?

Francl27 · January 2015

Oh that sounds like it would suck. Can you chew with your front molars at all?

I agree with just using your blender. When I had my wisdom teeth removed I ate a lot of Greek yogurt, ricotta, omelets, ground meat, soups, cheesecake (there's a recipe for protein cheesecake somewhere on these forums), protein shakes, mashed veggies, sausage, pancakes...

arabianhorselover · January 2015

Something like Ensure would be good to help you get the nutrients you need.

Teneko · January 2015

A really good blender will be your best friend for a while. I have a Vitamix and it'll blend about anything. They're pricey, but Bed Bath & Beyond has those 20% off coupons all the time, so I went there and picked mine up for a more reasonable price. Blendtec is also good (Will It Blend?).

Just about anything can be tossed into a good blender like that and pureed. I've been known to throw whole almonds in along with milk of choice and frozen fruits to make a smoothie in the past. You can also add oatmeal and/or peanut butter.

If you're not watching your sugars / carbs much, you can do stewed fruits and vegetables as well. Cook them until they're soft and mushy. An immersion blender can be handy as well. Even though I have the nice Vitamix, I still use an immersion blender to make mashed cheese cauliflower. It just works better for some things.

Jello...oh yes jello. On keto, I make my own "Knox blox" sweetened with stevia and throw in a tablespoon or two of heavy whipping cream.

Hope your bite gets back to chomping and chewing soon!

-T.

dbmata · January 2015

kikiboniki wrote: »

Hey all, I got lingual braces put on yesterday, and long story short, my molars no longer meet in the back. My bottom teeth hit the brackets of the top teeth and there isn't anything to be done until my bite corrects itself, which I've heard is 3-6 months....

So, its soft foods. I literally can't chew anything!
Do you have good ideas for food to actually make and keep me full? So far I've had protein shakes, soups, hot cereal, and yogurt

I'd strongly suggest you check out soylent.

A buddy of mine and I discussed it last night, he was using it for a well, did well for him.

kikiboniki · January 2015

Thanks all for the ideas. Someone asked if front molars touch. Nope. No touching teeth... My teeth hit brackets not teeth.... We are correcting a massive overbite

Francl27 · January 2015

Ugh sorry! So yeah, definitely invest in a good blender.

bwogilvie · January 2015

I had to eat soft foods after some recent dental implant surgery. Here are some of the things that I had: masoor dal, beef and bean stew, risotto with mushrooms, split pea soup with finely diced ham, crustless toast with cream cheese, mashed potatoes, shredded chicken with tomato-chutney sauce, and couscous.

Red lentils make a great dal for people who can't chew, since they dissolve into mush when you cook them long enough.

Given how long this might take, I would recommend getting a pressure cooker. The modern varieties are quite safe, and with a pressure cooker you can save a lot of time cooking meat to the point where it falls apart like a stew, and cooking beans to your desired degree of softness. I used a pressure cooker for my chicken recipe, and in under 25 minutes the chicken thighs I used went from raw to falling apart.

One of my dad's surgeons mentioned another patient whose jaw had to be wired in place for 6 months, so he could only eat liquids. He started to make pizza smoothies, which he claimed were very tasty.

meal ideas for someone who can't chew??

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