A gesture as simple as swallowing food can be an ordeal for many people. It is estimated that up to two million people in Spain and up to 40 million throughout Europe suffer from this disorder, which consists of having problems with food or liquids going down the throat, that is, swallowing.
The consequences are multiple, from the ‘mild’, such as coughing or retching, but also very serious, such as possible drowning. Despite the fact that oropharyngeal dysphagia is a disease recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and included in the International Classification of Diseases and its high prevalence in hospitalized, institutionalized or independently living elderly people, there is still little known and underdiagnosed.
In fact, dysphagia is very present in prevalent diseases such as Parkinson’s, stroke, Parkinson’s, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or cerebral palsy, but it is also “a geriatric syndrome that up to half of people over the age of 1 end up having.” 75 years. Dysphagia comes little by little as we get older,” says Dr. Pere Clavé, director of research at the Mataró Hospital, founding president of the European Society of Swallowing Disorders and one of the world’s leading experts on the disorder.
Clavé was one of the protagonists of the First Dysphagia Conference, under the title of “Dysphagia, the unnoticed disorder”, organized by the Neurology service of the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital in Lleida and by the AREMI Cerebral Palsy Association and with the collaboration of Campofrío Health Care, the division of food products for the hospital and geriatric sector of Campofrío that seeks to focus on this pathology.
Romina Polo, head of the Nutrition and Development Area at Campofrío Health Care, confesses that her goal is to end the low visibility of the disease. “After working with hospitals and nursing homes, we have realized that there is a great lack of knowledge about dysphagia. We want to be speakers to raise awareness about this pathology, the diagnosis of which is slowed down in many cases,” she says.
Another of the central ideas of the day, in addition to giving visibility to this pathology, is that all people deserve personalized nutrition, with a complete, textured, balanced and quality diet. In this sense, Clavé maintained that “healthcare, socio-healthcare and nursing home catering companies have a magnificent opportunity to develop specific diets for patients with chewing and swallowing disorders and contribute to improving the health and quality of life of these patients. ”.
And that is where the commitment of the food industry becomes important. In fact, Campofrío Health Care is already collaborating with the Furega Foundation, the Maresme Sanitari Consortium and the National Center for Food Technology and Safety (CNTA), to carry out a nutritional and functional assessment of its entire catalog and manage to offer people with dysphagia a range of products that provide them with personalized nutrition with a complete, textured, balanced and delicious diet.
Dysphagia causes patients to have to be very careful with the products they consume, but they also have to face monotony, because a person with dysphagia is condemned to always consume crushed foods and, on top of that, it has to be crushed with a texture determined and the flavors are lost.
Campofrío Health Care has been producing foods for people with dysphagia for 12 years and has developed a portfolio that includes, in addition to breakfasts, concentrated broths, creams, natural, nutriplus and traditional purees, purees, fruit desserts and gelled waters.
Thus, during the day, chef Danny Hawthorn gave a demonstration using the brand’s products and presented different and, above all, attractive culinary proposals because one of the main handicaps of people with dysphagia when it comes to eating is monotony. “The nutritional content is essential, but a person with dysphagia is condemned to always consume crushed foods. They eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner… It becomes a repetitive situation. And, sometimes, in that crushing process, the flavors and aromas are lost,” says Hawthorn. Their intention is to reverse this situation and to do so, “there are tools such as silicone molds and pharmaceutical thickeners,” explains the chef, “that allow us to work on proposals that patients can enjoy and propose recipes such as black rice pudding with aioli, pomodoro polpettes, shrimp curry or teriyaki octopus.”
“At Campofrío Health Care we started with crushed foods as basic elements of lunch and dinner, which we later decided to supplement. All this with recipes within the framework of the Mediterranean diet, which is a guarantee of nutritional balance. Our strategy is to have a smaller volume of food and a higher caloric intake because these patients cannot consume large quantities and tend to fill up very quickly,” explained Romina Polo.
The First Dysphagia Conference organized by the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital in Lleida had two round tables. The first revolved around this disorder in people with disabilities, moderated by Dr. Neus Pociello and which featured experts such as nutritionist Carla Abella and speech therapist Teresa del Cacho.
The second round table dealt with the evolution of dysphagia in relation to age. Moderated by Dr. Paco Purroy, professionals such as nurse Montse Molina or nutritionist Montse Paüls intervened.
The event united the medical community, patients, associations and families, and the food industry represented by Campofrío Health Care in the desire to continue working to make visible and provide more solutions to patients with a forgotten disorder.
