A collaborative research report by apetito and Care England underlines the increasing importance of mealtimes to care home residents’ wellbeing and health outcomes. James Leigh, General Manager for Care Homes at apetito gives an overview.
Mealtimes are essential to delivering high quality care, having a significant impact on residents’ health outcomes, quality of life and daily experiences, as well as being increasingly reflected in assessments of service quality.
The new collaborative research report, Nourishing Lives: Shaping the Future of Mealtimes in Care, from apetito and Care England found that the perceived importance of mealtimes in care homes is rising, with providers no longer recognising it as just an optional enhancement.
Mealtimes are viewed as the most important part of a resident’s day by 95 per cent of care homes – a 15 per cent increase since the previous ‘Nourishing Lives’ research conducted in 2023 – and 80 per cent believe the dining environment is a pivotal factor for families choosing a home for a loved one, up from 50 per cent.
Despite this, there is an evident, widening gap between this aspiration for a high-quality, person centred approach to mealtimes, and the reality of what staff can provide.
Visit apetito at Care Show London!
Our VIP Lounge is back on stand H20 at Care Show London on 29th and 30th April. Visit the team if you want to find out how our full-service solution can simplify operations at your care home or visit apetito.link/CHE.
If you want to hear more about how our award-winning texture modified range of meals can support the safety and wellbeing of your residents, visit the Wiltshire Farm Foods Professional team on stand J43 or visit www.wffpro.co.uk
This article will explore some of the report’s key findings that raise concern about care homes delivering a personalised approach to nutrition and dining, implications for safety and quality, and how sector workforce pressures continue to exasperate the challenge.
The rising complexity of nutritional needs
Increasingly, care homes are supporting residents with complex dietary needs, whether through living with conditions like dysphagia and dementia, food allergies or having cultural and personal preferences - all of these must be managed by already time-pressured kitchens.
This means that providing personalised nutrition is no longer based on simply offering choice but is critical to support clinical needs, directly influence health outcomes and ensure safety during mealtimes, with grave consequences of getting it wrong.
The report shows 88 per cent of care home providers find it difficult to ensure all residents receive the correct nutrition, a notable increase from 2023, while only 17 per cent have personalised nutrition plans in place for all residents, showing a significant fall from around half (50 per cent) compared to three years ago.
While 90 per cent of care homes support residents living with dysphagia, only 86 per cent say they are adhering to the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) when preparing texture modified meals. This is an area that seems to have gone backwards in recent years, showing a 10 per cent deterioration from 2023 data, and highlighting an area of concern around safety from choking, and care quality.
From this it seems clear that, despite understanding its importance, care homes are operating in a space that makes it increasingly difficult to deliver a personalised approach to nutrition, risking rising cases of malnutrition and serious impacts on resident health and wellbeing.
Overlooking the mealtime environment
Findings show that the vast majority (96 per cent) of homes believe the dining environment significantly influences enjoyment, reinforcing its role as a social hub that fosters meaningful connections, supports dignity, and improves overall resident satisfaction.
Though, just as nutritional needs vary from person-to-person, so too do the environments that enable residents to eat well.
For residents living with dementia, the environment can be even more important. Lighting, noise, visual cues and consistent routines all have an impact on nutritional intake.
Even when staff training has been provided on dementia-friendly dining, around half of those surveyed claimed they found it challenging to create the ‘right’ experience, and only 25 per cent of care homes report having separate dining rooms for those requiring specialist settings.
These findings again point to an execution gap in delivering a truly person-centred approach to mealtimes, raising questions on CQC compliance and the ability of services to meet the care needs of those living with dementia. Guidance makes it clear that good nutrition involves more than food alone - it requires attention to how, where and with whom people eat- and tailored dining experiences are essential for residents with long-term conditions to receive, and consume, the right nutrition.
Yet with catering teams increasingly under strain and facing competing operational pressures, adapting dining environments too often becomes an overlooked aspect of care.
Workforce pressures at the heart of the problem
While food inflation dominated cost concerns in 2023, 98 per cent of homes now say workforce-related costs are their biggest pressure, and 71 per cent have had to make operational or staffing changes as a result.
Findings also show that 40 per cent of homes still struggle to maintain adequate staffing levels and over half report ongoing recruitment difficulties.
Against this backdrop, delivering a truly personalised mealtime experience becomes increasingly difficult. Rising resident needs demand more time and skills, but stretched teams are unable to sustain the level of individual support required. This isn’t a reflection of staff commitment, but just the reality of ongoing workforce shortages.
To ensure providers can meet expectations around nutrition, dining environments and person-centred care, coordinated action is needed across the sector so that teams are properly resourced and supported. Only then can the personalised approach that is so critical to resident health be delivered consistently.
Smarter meal solutions supporting stretched teams
Given the pressures on care home catering teams, reducing time spent on meal preparation can help staff focus on what matters most: personalising dining experiences to support individual nutritional needs, and create mealtimes that enhance wellbeing. Pre-prepared meal solutions, such as those from apetito, offer clear benefits across food safety, workforce pressures and regulatory compliance, while reducing reliance on individual expertise and embedding more efficient practice.
And the research findings support this: over half of homes believe pre-prepared options lower risk and give staff greater confidence when catering for complex dietary needs. Among homes already using these solutions, only 30 per cent reported needing operational changes in response to workforce cost pressures - compared with 71 per cent across the wider sector.
To read the full research report from apetito and Care England, which offers an insightful deep dive into the current state of catering, nutrition, dining and sustainability across the sector, visit apetito.link/nl2026
James Leigh
James joined apetito in 2012 and has worked in several different roles within its Care Homes division and Wiltshire Farm Foods business. Having spent many years working with care providers to improve the quality of food they’re serving and the dining experience they’re offering, James has extensive experience across all areas of care catering.
