Physicochemical and nutritional characteristics of handmade enteral diets

There is an increasing use of enteral therapy at home, which reduces costs and improves patients' quality of life. Homemade food diets are being commonly used in the households of undeveloped countries, but those diets vary in composition and characteristics depending on the ingredients and preparation procedures adopted in its preparation, which influences the quality of the diet to satisfy the nutritional needs of patients.

This study aimed to formulate and determine the quality of homemade enteral diets.

An enteral diet plan was prepared by using conventional food, consisting of 6 meals, totalizing 2 liters per day, and it was adopted a proportion of 25% of solid food. The diets were analyzed for stability, viscosity, flow, pH, chemical and nutritional composition.

The enteral diet plan was adequate in its physical-chemical aspects, however, it presented low percentages of adequacy, 20-53%, between the estimated and real content of macronutrients in the soup, formula used for lunch and dinner, which impaired the nutritional quality of the enteral diet plan.

The results showed the difficulty of establishing the nutritional content of these diets, especially when made of meat and vegetables. Therefore, it is suggested a mixed enteral therapy by using commercial diets to achieve part of the nutritional needs of the patient together with enteral diets of homemade food to supplement it and also to redeem the psychosocial values of the feeding process.