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Cooking for therapeutic diets

Therapeutic nutrition involves special methods of cooking, which can sometimes be more labor-intensive than regular cooking. Preference is given to thermally processed foods, as they are easier to digest and do not cause the painful effects that the same foods can have when eaten raw. Thermal processing dramatically changes the physical and chemical characteristics of food products, which leads to the question of how to preserve nutrients during thermal processing in therapeutic diet dishes.

There are several types of thermal processing of products:

frying in a pan,
boiling in water,
stewing in a small amount of water and oil,
steam treatment,
grilling or spit roasting,
baking in an oven or stove,
by scalding.

Cooking by boiling in water, steaming, baking in an oven or stove, scalding for therapeutic nutrition suitable. Of the selected options, steaming and scalding are considered the most gentle methods of heat treatment without losing nutrients.

Frying is usually accompanied by the presence of oils in certain quantities. The most acceptable frying option for a therapeutic diet is sautéing. Sautéing allows you to preserve almost all vitamins, minerals and some useful enzymes.

Stewing and baking are also appropriate as options for processing food products, but they do not preserve useful substances, since both of these processes take a long time. Nevertheless, these options for heat treatment of products allow you to turn vegetables, fruits, berries and meat into digestible products that are easy to digest.

Boiling in water helps to boil out aromatic substances and other volatile compounds, so often boiled plant products seem tasteless. But to preserve their taste appeal in therapeutic nutrition, root vegetables (carrots, celery, parsley and other roots) are first sautéed in a small amount of vegetable oil, and then boiled, steamed or stewed. This method preserves the taste of vegetables.

It is known that the most suitable vegetables for therapeutic nutrition are potatoes, sweet potatoes, and legumes. These plant products contain a large number of starch grains, which, when swollen in water and cooked, turn into a jelly-like mass, which makes them easy to chew and easy to digest.

Not everything food products are easy to preserve in an attractive food form for the purposes of therapeutic nutrition. Sometimes it is necessary to grind or crush particularly tough plant products after heat treatment to a puree state. This method of cooking for a therapeutic diet is suitable for making cereal porridges, soups with cereals or legumes.

Meat products, eggs and fish in boiled or steamed form are easily digested and absorbed. But here too, you can prepare medicinal dishes that are interesting from the point of view of taste sensations for a sick person. Boiled or steamed meat, fish and eggs are easily turned into pates that are pleasant to eat, even when on a strict diet.

Fresh juices can easily be turned into fruit drinks, which are more suitable for therapeutic nutrition.

Soups, borscht and other first courses for the purposes of a therapeutic diet are prepared in the form of soups - puree or in the form of soups with strained ingredients (for example, from grain porridges).

Some types of cereals and legumes have the property of releasing mucous substances into water. Soups, soft side dishes, and pates can also be prepared on mucous broths.

As for desserts when following a therapeutic diet, there is a lot of room for a creative approach to cooking. In order to treat a sick person with desserts, it is necessary to learn several techniques for preparing products for such desserts.

A dessert scrambled eggs for therapeutic nutrition can replace any cream if this scrambled eggs is steamed with added sugar and beaten with a blender, mixer or whisk until it becomes porridge. The whites will make a white egg cream, and the yolks or unseparated components of the egg will make a yellow egg cream.

Curd cream for a therapeutic dessert can be whipped from a pack of curd and a tablespoon of low-fat sour cream and sugar. Instead of sour cream, you can add a slimy decoction of rolled oats to this cream. A tasty and healthy medicinal dessert can also be made from whipped curd combined with gelatin (brew the gelatin separately and mix the swollen gelatin with the curd mass whipped with sugar).

An interesting dessert jelly for therapeutic nutrition can be obtained by mixing swollen gelatin with yogurt whipped with sugar.

The easiest way to cooking curd cream for therapeutic nutrition is to beat the curd with a small amount of sugar and mix it with fruit or berry puree made from baked or steamed fruit and berry pulp. In this case, the fruits and berries can be pre-rubbed through a fine mesh colander or sieve to remove the seeds.

The rules for cooking dishes for a therapeutic diet can be used for dishes for a preventive or sports diet.