7 Tools That Make Cooking With Parkinson’s Easier
We asked a variety of patients which kitchen tools help make cooking with Parkinson’s symptoms safe, efficient, and joyful.
By Jacqueline Raposo for Epicurious
This illustration by Walter Greens shows colorful boxes with kitchen tongs, a mat, a chopper, gloves, and adaptive utensils.
A Parkinson’s diagnosis brings a period of massive home reassessment, with every chair and throw rug now subject to scrutiny. The kitchen, packed as it is with pointy objects and hot surfaces, might appear to be the most dangerous room in the house.
“Are you tremor specific? Then the kitchen is going to be tough,” begins Melani Dizon, director of education for the Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinson’s of how the nervous system disorder causes involuntary quivering in around 80% of Parkinson’s patients. “If you have swallowing issues, then eating is going to be tough. If you have freezing of gait, then you’re going to have trouble in the preparing phase.”
Deciding to swap or simply eliminate certain kitchen tools can add emotional insult to the physical injury of Parkinson’s, so getting yourself in the right headspace can be important. “Part of it is accepting where you are and not being embarrassed. I’ve found it very humbling,” says Kat Hill, a Portland, Oregon Parkinson’s patient who learned to gradually let go of certain routines after being diagnosed in her 40s. “I had 50 years of peeling potatoes. Is it really a loss not to do that anymore?”
We asked a variety of patients which kitchen tools help make cooking with Parkinson’s symptoms safe, efficient, and joyful. Read on for their favorite accessible and affordable options…
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