Mum cannot stop buying food

[woohoofoo]

Hi Everyone,
I hope you can help. My Mum cannot stop buying food and it is all going off in the fridge and as she isn't checking dates, I am getting very worried.
Basically there is only my Mum and Dad to buy for and she buys such excessive amounts, and then it all goes off in the fridge and she leaves it. I am clearing out the fridge on a weekly basis when I visit and I have told Mum numerous times, very gently that she cannot keep buying food like this, but she wont listen. My Dad is worried about finances along with food poisoning as it's really getting out of hand.
I have offered to do the shopping and so has my Dad, but she will not let us and gets quite aggressive over this as I think she sees it as her one outlet. She won't even let me accompany her. My friends Mum bumped into my Mum in M&S last week and Mum told her that she was only buying a loaf of bread. Mum spent £103.00.
I am getting worried about this though and wondered if anyone could offer some suggestions or has been through something similar?
Thankyou!

[JackMac]

hello
im really sorry i don't have a solution to this but I can tell you that my mum used to do this and eventually stopped. I dont think she did it for that long, a few months maybe.
I'm not sure mum spent huge amounts but it was a concern to us too. Actually I think there were times where dad would give her the weekly shopping money which was a fair amount and it would be gone a few days later.
We have power of attorney and if the problem had escalated we would have had to action it.
I do sympathise. It is a difficult one. Hopefully your mum will stop doing it like mine did.
jackmac

[tre]

My mum used to do this too but only certain items. She brought enough tinned pears , peaches and grapefruit to last them for the next two years. It did pass eventually.
Tre

[Witzend]

One of the things that first told us there was something wrong with my fil (apart from the fact that he'd started to look scruffy, wasn't shaving, wearing grubby clothes etc.) was the fact that we'd find 6 or more identical packs of sausages in his fridge.

Don't know what you can do about it to be honest - once they've got to the stage where they won't remember anything you say, it's hard to prevent this sort of thing unless you take the means of shopping (i.e. cash) out of their hands. Which is not easy unless you've got P of A set up.

[Amber31]

My mum is totally obsessed with wanting to buy food, doesn't matter how much she has its never the right kind of food and its never enough. It seems to be the one thing that continually worries her, well apart from not having any money but that's another story. I throw food away and clean out the fridge on a weekly basis. Mum still goes dial a ride with a friend but I know that sooner or later she will have to stop going. She'll comes back with tubs of butter, numerous boxes of tea, dishwasher tablets and cream cakes. Before Christmas she came home with her shopping and someone else's, I spent most of the evening trying to work out what belonged to mum and what belonged to the lady over the road.

I don't know if this would work for you but you I've started to take mum shopping on a Sunday. We go to M&S and have a coffee then go food shopping which she thinks is very important. I always tell her that I'm going anyway and that its easier if we go together. When I first started taking her I did get stressed because mum would tell the checkout lady the food didn't belong to her and she that she didn't know where it came from but now I've got it down to a fine art. Mum puts food in the trolley and when she's not looking I take it out. She can't remember what she's put in it so as long as she doesn't see me take it out it seems to work. We only buy what she needs, and we only have the odd comment at the checkout about where did those biscuits come from!

[hollycat]

Another one of my crazy ideas that I have just MADE UP.

If mum is putting lots of food in the fridge, I said to myself, how do you stop someone filling a fridge ? ANSWER, fill the fridge yourself.

Sorry if this sounds daft, but mum has for years had a plastic cheese box in her fridge (for cheese). Could you somehow half fill the fridge with plastic containers that contain things with a long shelf life e.g. Tins of tuna ?

Sorry if this sounds crazy; I have these moments on TP now and again.

Another idea is a smaller fridge.

I admit, that she may then continue buying the same amount of things and be forced to leave them out of the fridge meaning they go off quicker, but just thought I would offer the idea to see what you and others think.

My mum went through a phase of cooking soup and baking cakes. We managed to cheat her in the end by filling the freezer full of bread meaning she had nowhere to put the cakes and soup as she enjoyed freezing them. This phase has now passed and lasted for about 6 months.

[zeeeb]

I think the only real option is to remove the money. If she has a card, maybe it needs to be changed to a debit card with a small weekly balance. It will be hard, because she'll probably go to the shop and get a decline, which will cause all kinds of problems in itself.

It's a tough thing to do, but she will be draining the money away on things that end up in the bin. Something that eventually needs to be done with someone with alzheimers, because they really can't be responsible for a bank account full of money, it's a recipe for disaster.

I don't envy you, and fear that is what's going to happen with my mum. She has had a fridge full of out of date food for years, when she's not around i have to sneak things into the bin on her. my mum's only outlet also is spending. they recently had their bedroom re-painted, so she had to clear out her wardrobe. boxes and boxes of brand new clothes, underwear, shoes, with tags still on. it was ridiculous. She just loves to spend money, doens't matter what on, she like to buy things. I don't know how long it's going to take for dad to remove her money, but i'm pretty sure she'll do some serious spending before that time.

[Sue J]

I have dementia symptoms but am currently undiagnosed. I have some insight too. I buy way too much food - I was never like this before. Why do I do it? because I forget from one day to the next(or one minute or hour to the next) what I have got in the fridge or cupboards, I am unable to work and there are few places I am able to go to do any meaningful activity where I would feel Ok with my symptoms, I have no sense of time, I like cooking. But I have this awareness, I live alone and no-one to monitor this for me - I have thought - not yet translated to action (as is often the case) I should go out with no cards and maybe just £5 in my purse. Thankfully , I've always been good with money but I'm still spending more than I should or need. I hate wasting food. Any suggestions I would welcome. Some symptoms are a bit better so I try and avoid waste but I also end up eating more than I need too.

[Onlyme]

I have dementia symptoms but am currently undiagnosed. I have some insight too. I buy way too much food - I was never like this before. Why do I do it? because I forget from one day to the next(or one minute or hour to the next) what I have got in the fridge or cupboards, I am unable to work and there are few places I am able to go to do any meaningful activity where I would feel Ok with my symptoms, I have no sense of time, I like cooking. But I have this awareness, I live alone and no-one to monitor this for me - I have thought - not yet translated to action (as is often the case) I should go out with no cards and maybe just £5 in my purse. Thankfully , I've always been good with money but I'm still spending more than I should or need. I hate wasting food. Any suggestions I would welcome. Some symptoms are a bit better so I try and avoid waste but I also end up eating more than I need too.

Sue, can you buy a small notebook and work out your meals for a few days. Write down what you need to make that meal in each section and tick it when you buy it, cross it through when you have eaten it. It might be worth a try. Sorry it this sounds all wrong to you, just try to find something that works for you.

[Tooshie]

Hello Woofoohoo,

My Mother is obsessed with food shopping. Your post made me laugh, but that doesn't mean I think it's not a worry. But she hasn't been diagnosed with dementia because she is very good at passing 'interviews'!

I often think my Mother thinks that she'll starve to death if she doesn't keep buying food. Look in her freezer and you find 2 loaves but she still wants a fresh one brought in... She's determined to buy 3 x 2 pints of milk every week, but there are still 2 unopened cartons in the fridge from last week, threatening or sometimes post expiry date! Frozen peas and Yorkshire puddings are life's essentials. And frozen legs of lamp, but she's outrageous at the price of them. I hate frozen food, but I'm not her so I don't challenge her choice. I'm sure you can relate to all this!

I did her weekly shop yesterday, and I only brought 4 pints of milk in (how brave am I then?!). They're standing in the fridge next to the 2 from last friday looking like soldiers!

I think my Mother's obsession stems from her enjoyment of buying for a family of 4 (many moons ago of course), and she can't/won't accept that there really is only her to cater for most of the time, as we prefer to eat out (for many reasons associated with her 'habits'!). I think Motherhood enpowered my Mother - gave her a sense of true purpose and responsbility compared to her job which was not challenging or technical and had no management remit.

The other thing I often consider is that my Daddy died with oesophageal cancer as well as diabetes and heart disease. His tumour site made eating difficult for him, and I used to keep saying to him that even on the days when he didn't feel like eating, that he had to try to get something down, even if it was just a desert, so that he didn't waste away from malnutrition. Now that Mother has BC, she often refers to what I used to say to Daddy, so I think the obsession with food (and eating as much of it as she can), it a survival mechanism. Unfortunately she is starting to eat less and feel less hungry, and I can see her weight dropping gradually, but as she has a good reserve, then this is now carrying her through.

Hope this makes sense? Maybe you can identify a link to your Mother's obsession. If you can, then you will be in with a chance of reassuring her and hopefully manage the issues.

Best of luck.

Tooshie x

[Sue J]

Sue, can you buy a small notebook and work out your meals for a few days. Write down what you need to make that meal in each section and tick it when you buy it, cross it through when you have eaten it. It might be worth a try. Sorry it this sounds all wrong to you, just try to find something that works for you.

Thanks Lemony for your suggestion, and don't apologize for sounding wrong, I appreciate you thinking about it and writing. However, I don't think it would work for me as it would be like trying to learn something new and that seems difficult and also I know I'd forget, it would work on my better days but then I'd lose it. I said to my CPN something like 'I don't know what I'm going to have for tea tonight' and afterwards realised she probably thought 'No, and neither do I' but when you can think 'normally' you do it 'without thinking' if that makes sense - it's not a problem. But now it seems if I 'can't think' it becomes a problem - don't really know how else describe it other than my 'mind just doesn't work properly anymore' a lot of the time. That's what's so frightening about this your mind isn't able to do the things that you want to do and what you were once able to do If my leg wasn't working I'd use my mind to compensate not sure how to do it the other way around I'll keep trying

[Delphie]

My mum keeps buying food too, the same five or so things over and over. It's mainly bread, cheese, milk, cold meat (she stopped cooking years ago) etc but she buys it every day, or even more often, so it's not unusual for her to have 10+ loaves all around the house and the very dirty fridge is full of out of date food all the time. Some of it is mouldy, but she doesn't see it, nor does she let me take old food out. I sometimes manage it when she's not looking but she's never far away from me so that only really happens if she needs to loo while I'm there.

I've tried putting my foot down and insisting on a fridge clear out but she won't have it and it leads to arguments. I've tried shopping for her but it only leads to more stuff rotting away.

In short, there's very little I've been able to do about it and I'm hoping that it's a phase she'll leave behind at some point.

I think it's mostly down to the memory problems. Mum can't retain very much now so when she's out and about will have absolutely no idea what's in her fridge and what needs buying, so she just buys more. And if she goes out again that day she won't remember that she's shopped already. Shopping is her only activity now anyway. She walks about town all day, has lunch, shops for food. That's it.

I already control her money so could control it so tight as to stop her being able to do this but it would have a huge impact on her life so I'm learning to live with it. It's been going on for ages and she's managing to avoid food poisoning somehow. Not an ideal situation but probably the best option for now.

[Nix]

Hi

Is it possible to freeze some of the items that your Mum puts in the fridge if you go and visit after a recent shopping spree? This would drive me crazy as I can't stand wasted food, just one of my foibles I know it's not a solution but it may prevent some of the waste. Also if she buys too much of things that are of use to you would she allow you to give her something for them? Just trying to think of little things that might help.

SueJ, I hope someone comes up with some ideas that might help, I can only think of the freezer option again, sorry

[Sue J]

Thanks, I do use the freezer a lot. I buy htings with good intention, then 'forget' if I 'come too' a few days later I sometimes then try and use everything up and make lots of meals - I hate wasted food too. If there was a dementia centre for young onset - I'd go and cook there, give me something to do - I have a lot of skills and when I'm able to use them, albeit in a cackhanded way at times , they could still benefit others but sadly nothing like that around.

[Tooshie]

[QUOTE=Delphie;584721]...Some of it is mouldy, but she doesn't see it, nor does she let me take old food out.

...I've tried putting my foot down but she won't have it and it leads to arguments

...And if she goes out again that day she won't remember that she's shopped already. Shopping is her only activity now anyway. She walks about town all day, has lunch, shops for food. That's it...

...she's managing to avoid food poisoning somehow.

Your posts are very similar to what I could also have included. What worries me is the hygiene issues. My mother doesn't seem to recognise the mould on the bread owing to it being in cellophane and sitting in a metal bread bin in warm weather. She even tries to force me to eat mouldy bread!!

I think shopping is my mother's only activity/purpose these days now too, and so when they are bored or looking for human interaction, then this is the only route to take for them.

Tooshie x