The foods in this diet are easy to eat and do not need a lot of chewing to swallow safely. This diet is helpful if you are missing teeth or have just had surgery and cannot chew hard foods. This diet does include soft breads and rice, so it is important that you can move food in your mouth and can swallow safely.
Bread. Soft cereals. Hot cereals, like cream of wheat or oatmeal. Pasta and noodles.
A mechanical soft diet consists of any foods that can be blended, mashed, pureed, or chopped using a kitchen tool such as a knife, a grinder, a blender, or a food processor. These processes break down the structure of foods to make them soft and easy to eat without biting or chewing.
Summary. A mechanical soft diet is a type of texture-modified diet for people who have difficulty chewing and swallowing. Foods may be pureed, ground, finely chopped, or blended to make eating safer.
Hard foods – sweets, tough meat, nuts, seeds. Bread is usually only recommended to be safe on a case-by-case basis as per guidance from your Speech and Language Therapist.
Avoid toasting bread or choosing varieties with hard, crispy crusts, such as sourdough. Crackers, cereals, and crunchy cookies can be softened with water or milk (slurried). Dairy: Dairy products like yogurt, soft cheese, and cottage cheese are already suitable for a mechanical soft diet without any additional prep.
Pasta and pasta dishes such as spaghetti and macaroni and cheese are allowed on mechanical soft diets.
Foods in the puréed food and mechanical soft food diets are smoother and easier to swallow than regular foods. They need very little or no chewing. If you're on a puréed food diet, you will eat foods you don't need to chew, such as mashed potatoes and pudding.
A soft diet is prescribed for people with digestive problems. The diet consists of foods that are tender, mildly seasoned, and easy to digest. While on this diet, you should not eat fried or spicy foods, or raw fruits and vegetables.
From a texture point of view, bread and toast are fibrous, generally dry with a low moisture content and can't be mashed with a fork, which is what is required for a soft food diet texture. Eating toast requires good oral strength and control to chew and swallow. Without this, a person is at increased risk of choking.
Fresh Cooked Vegetables. Fruit Smoothies/Protein Shakes. Oatmeal/Cream of Wheat. Eggs (scrambled, soft boiled, omelets, egg salad)
You can eat almost any meat on a mechanical soft diet. You will, however, want to avoid bacon as it does not grind easily along with most lunchmeats. If you want meat that has an outside skin to it, such as bratwurst or hot dogs, remove the skin before grinding the meat.
Bread is a simple food, prepared with flour (wheat or spelt), water, yeast and salt.
The following chewy foods are off-limits while wearing braces. Thick and chewy bread (such as pizza crust and bagels). Jerky snacks. Fibrous (stringy) meats (such as steak) and meat on the bone (such as chicken wings and turkey legs).
Beverages. OK: Milk, tea, coffee, fruit juices, carbonated beverages, nutrition shakes, and drinks (Note: Thin liquids may be hard to swallow. They may need to be thickened.)
On a pureed diet, you can have foods that are mashed or blended so that you do not need to chew them. They are smooth and have no lumps or big pieces. These foods are easy to swallow and you do not need to chew much. You cannot eat any breads or baked goods unless they have been put through the blender.
Breads, cereals, rice, and pasta:
Breads, muffins, pancakes, or waffles moistened with syrup, jelly, margarine or butter. Moist dry or cooked cereal. Macaroni, pasta, noodles, or rice. Saltine crackers moistened in soup or other liquid.
To Purée is to blend, grind or mash food until it is a thick, smooth, lump-free consistency. A Purée is a food that has the consistency of a soft creamy paste." Scrambled eggs are not a purée, refried beans are not a purée unless completely smooth, chili is not a purée.
Soft Sandwiches
Tuna Salad. Egg Salad. Thinly Sliced Deli Meat. & Cheese. Creamy Peanut Butter & Jelly.
The best sources are milk, meats, fish, eggs, cheese, peanut butter, and dried beans and peas. Blenderized Food which is soft or cooked until tender and blended in a blender or a food processor. Pureed The thick, smooth consistency of food which has been blenderized.
The mechanical soft diet is appropriate for patients who are recovering from head, neck, or mouth surgery, who have dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), narrowing of the esophagus (food tube), or who are too ill or weak to chew.
Scrambled Eggs
When they are scrambled, eggs are soft and easy to swallow. It is easy to combine pureed vegetables with eggs if you want to add extra nutrients and flavor. While softer foods can be bland, eggs are delicious when well prepared.
Difficulty swallowing solid foods is a symptom that should never be ignored. This complaint is most often caused by scar tissue forming in the esophagus from chronic acid reflux. Since the esophagus is not constructed to withstand repeated acid exposure, the cycle of inflammation and healing can result in scar tissue.
A narrowed esophagus (stricture) can trap large pieces of food. Tumors or scar tissue, often caused by gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), can cause narrowing. Esophageal tumors. Difficulty swallowing tends to get progressively worse when esophageal tumors are present due to narrowing of the esophagus.