Blended foods for gastrostomy-fed children

‘Nutritionally complete food’—the sort of stuff that goes down gastrostomy tubes—is only ‘complete’ in a very reductionist and limited sense. What arrives in the stomach is sterile, which proper food is not, and it does not acquire as much oral flora or saliva as chewed food. It is virtually free of fibre. It is no surprise that the intestinal micro-biome in patients so fed is very different to normal, and possibly pathological. Above all, such feeding has no emotional content: the parental love and care that normally goes into feeding a child is bypassed along with the mouth and oesophagus. So it is not surprising that parents are increasingly resorting to blending normal food and putting it down the gastrostomy tube, thereby using the liquid version of a child's normal diet to mimic as closely as possible the structure and function of mealtimes. The big question for professionals right now is whether this is safe. The more radical question is, might it even be better? Coad et al have pulled together a rapid review which …