In these times of lockdown, it’s brought many aspects of our daily lives into much sharper focus, not least the need to eat nutritious foods and stay healthy with enough exercise and mental stimulation.
But when you have mobility needs, there are additional considerations that can potentially make life more difficult when it comes to being able to easily prepare foods and cook with enough variety to maintain a good balance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
We all know that the best way to cook and prepare foods is to use fresh ingredients, such as vegetables, fruits, meats and fish with the addition of herbs and spices to aid in flavouring.
Again, the ideal of using fresh ingredients and cooking nutritious foods on a regular frequency can be problematic for those with mobility needs as just the food prep alone can be exhausting and time consuming when you’re having to navigate through hard to handle ingredients, let alone grappling with cans, jars and utensils.
So for many, eventual defeat looks like buying and surviving on ready meals, or ordering take-aways where we forego the difficulties of our food prep for a simpler and more manageable solution, but at the price of our good nutrition and getting the right balance of carbs, fats and protein.
Ready meals and take-aways tend to major much more towards the carbs and fats end of the spectrum, of course there are many healthy option ready meals on the market, but they often come at a premium price that is often not good value when considering the small portion size and inflated price for the essentially very simple dishes.
So if food prep is a problem, and the sheer difficulty of making meals for lunch and evening meal is putting you off even attempting, what’s on the market to help you if you have mobility issues in the kitchen?
Surprisingly, it’s often the most seemingly innocuous tasks that can carry the most difficulty when you have mobility issues, such as reaching up to high items in cupboards, or stretching to reach low down items, unscrewing caps of sauces, undoing bottles and jars – all so easy for the fit and active person, but a real nightmare when you don’t have the flexibility, grip strength or coordination.
One item that is a great helper to many for the task of opening bottles and jars is the Universal Jar and Bottle Opener, this device simply enables you to get a better and more secure grip and twist with greater leverage for far less strength required, one little tool that can save an awful lot of stress and painful hands due to tight lids!
The ergonomic, easy grip handle ensures safe and secure use for you, if you struggle to take of lids and bottle tops, also easy to find when you have lots of other tools and utensils out on your counter-top.
On the note of coordination, many people struggle when prepping ingredients, say, when slicing bread, or chopping fresh veg, it can be tricky for anyone, but with mobility problems it’s even more so.
The good news is that there are more and more devices and gadgets coming to the market to make these manual tasks easier in your home and kitchen.
A good example of this is the Kitchen Workstation, as the name suggests, this is a multi-function station specifically designed to help in the fast and hassle free preparation of food in the kitchen, essentially an extra pair of hands to get around many of those regular obstacles that have been putting you off cooking or baking.
The workstation is fitted with a versatile clamp, designed to hold food for preparation, vegetables for slicing, bread for cutting etc, it can also be used to hold bowls, jars or bottles of various sizes.
To allow for one handed grating or slicing, a grating and slicing box is also supplied, and this can be mounted securely on the surface of the Kitchen Workstation. This station comes into its own for users who have a weak or painful grip, or who don’t have the full use of both hands, such as arthritis sufferers or those recovering from an injury or surgery.
We all know that reaching, stretching, balancing and bending are all common hazards in the kitchen, or at the very least an unwelcome difficulty and inconvenience that can prevent us from attempting to cook nutritious foods.
Perching stools can provide flexible and variable levels of support, so you can easily and securely reach for higher access areas with ease, comfort and safety in the kitchen.
The base of the perching stool grips to most surfaces with ease and will give you that extra safe footing for whatever you are reaching for, a little extra reassurance and cutting down time and risk of injury. A great helper all round and not just in the kitchen.
Dealing with hot liquids from your kettle can be a hazardous activity in the kitchen, and yet for many types of food prep, such as for gravies and hot-drinks, the kettle is the fastest and easiest go-to appliance.
The Universal Kettle Tipper will accept most kettle types including standard, cordless and jug kettles. This device allows for much easier and safer kettle use even for those with weak or painful grip.
The kettle tipper is fitted with a large lever on either side that can be used to tip the kettle whilst it is held securely in place. This helps to greatly reduce the amount of effort required to lift the kettle and reduces the potential of wrist strain that can often occur when holding a kettle.
Being able to easily prepare and cook nutritious and fresh ingredients in your own kitchen is your right, and you should be able to do this with ease, safety and most of all, enjoyment.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed looking at some of the products that may be able to help you in the kitchen, or even around your home.
If you would like to take a look at a larger range of kitchen aids, you can see a larger range by clicking here.
Phil Ashforth is a staff writer for Mobility Smart, an online retailer of health, wellbeing and mobility equipment to help you recover from injury and recuperation, or just helping solve your mobility issues in normal daily life, you’ll find their website here .
Thanks will be purchasing a few of these for dad
I have a jar and bottle opener and it is so useful as I don’t have a lot of strength in my grip.