Some illnesses and treatments can affect your appetite or increase the amount of nutrition you need.
The high-calorie, high-protein recipe videos below can help you:
- maintain or gain muscle
- maintain or gain strength
- maintain or gain weight
- heal and recover sooner
Breakfast:
Drinks:
Savoury foods:
Sweet foods:
Find more recipes to get enough calories and protein and learn how to choose foods that are high in calories and protein (PDF).
Breakfast
Creamy hot wheat cereal
Using a nutrition supplement drink as the liquid in your hot cereals can help add calories and protein to your dish, while giving you different flavour options.
Creamy hot oatmeal
Using skim or whole milk powder adds extra calories and protein to your hot oatmeal.
You can flavour your cooked oatmeal however you like. Be creative and choose the flavours, toppings, and textures you enjoy.
Drinks
Chocolate, peanut butter, and banana smoothie
Smoothies are delicious, easy to make, and a great way to get extra calories and protein. They also give you many options to mix-and-match flavours.
You can also use whole milk, fortified soy beverage, or a chocolate nutrition supplement drink instead of the vanilla nutrition supplement for this recipe. The liquid you use will make a difference for how many calories and protein are in your smoothie.
Explore flavour combinations for smoothies with more calories and protein (PDF).
Savoury foods
Butternut squash and lentil soup
Cream soups like this one are generally higher in calories and protein than broth-based soups. Making soups that are higher in protein and calories helps you get more nutrition without having to eat a bigger amount of food.
High-protein high-calorie mashed potatoes
If your appetite is not at its best, you might find it hard to eat enough foods with protein, like meat. Protein powder can help you get more protein without making you feel too full.
When your protein powder doesn't have a specific taste (unflavoured), you can add it to lots of different foods and recipes, both hot and cold, to make them higher in calories and protein.
Sweet foods
Chia pudding
Adding extra calories to puddings can help you get more nutrition without having to eat a bigger amount of food. This can be helpful if your appetite is not at its best.
Chia pudding needs to set overnight. Try making it just before bed to have a portion ready to go in the morning.
Super pudding
This quick and easy chocolate pudding recipe has extra calories and protein from evaporated milk, canola oil, and skim milk powder. Add fresh or frozen fruit, nuts, seeds, or whatever toppings you’d like.
Energy bites
Energy bites are a great way to have a high energy and high protein food available for when you need a quick and tasty snack. They don’t need to be baked, use easy-to-find ingredients, and kids love to help make and eat them, too.
