Eating for Elliot!

This week we hear from Sophie Donovan and friends who completed a sponsored three-day purée diet for Operation Elliot, eating nothing but pureed meals and thickened water (apparently normal water was not allowed).  Sound disgusting? Well it was, just look at the photos below!  Sophie is a friend of Elliot's Mum Morwenna. Sophie and other fellow Speech and Language Therapists have together raised over £3,000 for Operation Elliot.

£3,000 for eating disgusting food.  Is it worth it? Well of course we think so!  Here's how Sophie, Helen and colleagues, and Becky, Jo, Shona, Nikki and Jules managed it:

Sophie, tell us what it was like to eat nothing but pureed meals for three days
Pretty grim! I was thirsty all the time despite making a real effort to keep my fluids up. The drinks were awful thickened! Smoothies were ok but I quickly got fed up with having sweet drinks all the time. I became desperate for water!

I made some soup for lunches and had puréed shepherds pie one night. They actually tasted ok but the food looks awful puréed. Not at all appetising, even when you're hungry! On Fri night I had puréed curry & rice which I just couldn't finish - it was all wrong, yuk.  My first normal meal tasted amazing. Pizza and a glass of crisp white wine has never tasted so good!

How did you keep going?
I had such a fantastic response from friends and colleagues which really helped keep me going, plus we all supported each other on Facebook which was fantastic (purée dieters and others from our UCL course). We shared notes about palatable foods and things to stock up on that were easy to transport around for snacks etc.

Anyway, that's enough from me! Here are some snippets from the others' Facebook food diaries:

Shona's Facebook Diary, Day One:
Day one of sponsored modified diet done. Harder than I thought. I have learned that thickened drinks really are awful. Tea is especially vile. Also getting a smooth texture in blended foods is difficult as I had to blend and then sieve some things. Also experimented with using the thickener as a soaking solution - soaked sandwiches anyone? Urghhhh!

Jules' Facebook Diary, Day One:
I've just encountered first pureed meal that I couldnt finish: scrambled eggs, veggie hotdogs and tomatoes. Just not right! Then tonic water thickened- fizzes over and was just unpalatable. However, black Earl grey tea (sweetened) was ok, and almost getting used to water being somewhere between wallpaper paste and frogspawn....At least it's for a good cause!

Jo's Facebook Diary, Day 3:
I've just had my last puréed meal - carrot, broccoli, potato with brown sauce for a bit of flavour, served up in one big splurge! And for pudding, treacle sponge pud and custard all blended together - SO sweet.

Reckon I'll have another thickened drink before bed. Looking forward to normal drinks more than anything tomorrow - I miss water the most. Still v thirsty.

A really big and heartfelt thanks to you all for your donations - together you have raised more than £250 through my challenge - with some more for me to forward when pledges are collected. Wonderful. I'm truly moved by your generosity and know that Elliot and his family are too x x

We certainly are, thanks to all of you for enduring what sounds like a truly horrible challenge!