Foods

These few weeks have been torture.

Last week I got spacers put in my teeth. Ow!! And then a few hours ago I got 3 permanent teeth yanked out because it's too crowded and it won't stop bleeding and hurting. :( Next week I'm getting braces. And then the week after, bottom ones.

I can't chew a darn thing practically. Not even small bits of ground beef!

I can eat: Yogurt and Oatmeal. But neither are that satisfying. (except the yogurt).

Anything healthy I can eat? (I don't want to live off jello, ice cream, and tomato soup)

omelets, tofu smoothies, applesauce, baby food (don't laugh, it is great!), other soups as long as they don't have too much sodium (I love miso but it is too salty). laughing cow spread cheese wedges

mashed potatoes?  fruit smoothies?  Also maybe you could puree foods, for example chunkier soups you could puree into a creamy soup with no pieces to chew.

Slim Fast or other meal replacement shakes are pretty satisfying and healthy as a short term option. Shredded low-fat cheese can be eaten without chewing too much. Bananas blended into milk is nice and smooth and nutritious. That was all I ate for almost a week after getting my tongue pierced, because I could barely swallow, never mind move it to chew, and it was frustrating but it wasn't so bad.

This is going to sound gross, but for a while I had a herbst appliance plus braces. probably somewhere around 5 years total. I just learned to smush my food up with a fork and swallow it whole. Overcooked cauliflower and sweet potatoes are good for this, becuase you can mash them of course just like regular potatoes. Really overcooked broccoli will go down easy.

It's not healthy and I wont advise it, but for a while I ate like a snake. I literally just swallowed chunks of food whole. I'm sure that has something to do with the intestinal problems I have to this day. >: (

Lots of good suggestions already, so I just want to throw some healthful broccoli soup out there.

Bring some water to a boil with a tsp. or two of salt.  Add broccoli florets.  Cook until broccoli can be easily pierced with a knife.  Puree in blender with enough of the cooking liquid to come halfway up the broccoli level (or to the desired consistency).  Taste for seasoning, possibly add a little riccota, some pepper, what have you.

I don't really have any suggestions for you that anyone hasn't mentioned already. Just a word of advice with the meal replacements. I JUST had my wisdom teeth out last week and I didn't eat anything for awhile, then I had one of those meal replacements. It was really heavy and sat not so happy in my belly. So just don't start drinking them on an empty stomach.

I feel for ya!

Put some fruit or berries in the blender with some peanut butter (or without, if you don't like it) and make a smoothie. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and bananas are really good for this kind of thing, though any fruit will work. You can also mash a variety of vegetables after boiling them - potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower. The same thing can be done with beans. Melt a slice of reduced-fat cheese over the top if you'd like.

I hope you feel better soon, I absolutely despise tooth problems and completely understand your frustration. Good luck! :)

I just remembered. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I ate plain lo mein because it slid down the throat easily and could be chewed with the tongue and roof of mouth.

I don't know if anybody has already said that, but you could have creamed rice ^^

And there are basically so many things you can have, like soups and smoothies, and they can have so many different flavours, that you wouldn't get bored.

Oh, and chocolate mousse. I'd be grateful for an excuse to eat that all the time xD

baby food is the thing if you ask me

My partner was on a no-solid-foods diet (doctor's orders, not fad-diet) earlier this year, and these were some of the things that worked well:

- Fat-free refried beans (with chili powder stirred in if you're me, cheese melted over if you're normal)

- Jello pudding with protein powder mixed in (get the kind you can stir rather than put in the blender, and add a scoop to a pudding cup, spoonful by spoonful - it actually does absorb!)

- Palak paneer (Google gives you about a zillion recipes, and if you're lucky, your grocery store might have a reasonably healthy version pre-made) and other viscous curry-type dishes

- Most chili (the beanless types have less solid matter in them, but are - in my vegetarian and also kind of strange opinion - gross; the with-bean and bean-only types are still soft enough to swallow without chewing, or to mash with your fork or tongue at most)

- As mentioned above, smoothies smoothies smoothies!  Take anything sweet and healthy you have in your freezer, dump it in your blender, and see what comes out!  (For a slightly more organized approach, there are smoothie recipes on CC, and also everywhere on the internet.  But this was seriously what we did.)

Hope some of these help; I know it can be a monster to try and find interesting semi-solid food for any serious length of time, and even worse when you're in pain.  I hope you feel better soon!

Original Post by megsambit:

Bring some water to a boil with a tsp. or two of salt. Add broccoli florets. Cook until broccoli can be easily pierced with a knife. Puree in blender with enough of the cooking liquid to come halfway up the broccoli level (or to the desired consistency). Taste for seasoning, possibly add a little riccota, some pepper, what have you.

This also works really well with canned asparagus and plain yogurt - you can even serve it cold, like a vichyssoise, with a twist of lemon on top!

Good news! This part of the inconvenience will be over very quickly. I ate tuna and eggs a lot unfortunately I also had a lot of mac & cheese and mashed potatoes! NOT Healthy. I just got my braces on in March and it is not so bad. You will learn to smoosh things on the roof of your mouth! Good luck

Babyfood is great... lots of nutrition, no added sugar/salt, and no chewing required. When I had my three teeth out I took it very easy on food for the first week - I ate homemade vegetable soup pureed up in the blender (sweet potato or butternut squash is great, fruit smoothies with cottage cheese in them for protein, and fruit juice with fiber powder mixed into it because it's hard to get enough fiber when you can't eat grains. Don't worry so much about sugar for now - it's more important to get enough calories for healing than to try to 'eat healthy' while you heal.