My 76 yr old mom was never a great cook but she's gotten worse. She's tired, has cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, etc. But she tries every once in awhile and it's not like it used to be. She takes short cuts, uses inferior ingredients, gets confused, and overcooks things. But we pretend to enjoy the food as much as we did before. She definitely doesn't branch out to try anything new.

Depends on the person. My mom hates cooking, but did a decent job. As she got older, she hated it even more and it was not as good.

Really good cooks who love cooking and don't have dementia still do pretty well.

My family stayed with us over the holidays and my parents cooked up a storm. Despite being in their 70s, the food was delicious and as good as ever.

Taste buds definitely change as you get older so if your parent seasons things to taste vs following a recipe exactly that may be part of it. I can remember my grandmother adding extra pepper, onion, mustard, vinegar, etc to recipes because she would taste it and not think it was strong enough. Also with eye sight getting worse, she would sometime mess up tbs and tsp.

Anonymous wrote:A number of people here describing so-called bad cooks (and iffy food safety) are really describing the early stages of dementia. The people who forget steps or skip steps or forget how to peel apples etc. I mean yes, they’re cooking skills are declining — because their cognitive skills are declining.

Hold on. I wouldn't automatically connect dementia to people slowing down as they get older. We're not talking about Joe Biden here.

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