Nutrition Assessment by a Registered Dietitian

A conversation with a Registered Dietitian about what you were eating before the accident, what you are managing now, and what has changed. No food diary is needed in advance.

What it looks at: your current intake and eating patterns, physical difficulties with eating such as jaw or digestive pain, appetite and how medication or mood is affecting it, weight change, nutritional gaps, and your practical circumstances including budget, cooking ability and who does the shopping.

Why it helps: it identifies why eating has become difficult and produces a plan you can actually follow. Poor nutrition slows tissue healing and worsens fatigue, mood and pain sensitivity, so addressing it supports every other part of your recovery.

For nausea, bloating, reflux, pain after eating or altered bowel habit following seatbelt or abdominal trauma, symptoms frequently attributed to stress and left untreated.

What it looks at: your symptom pattern and what triggers it, which foods and eating patterns you are tolerating, your nutritional adequacy given those restrictions, and whether further medical investigation is warranted.

Why it helps: it separates injury-related digestive problems from anxiety-related ones, and gives you an eating plan you can tolerate now, widened again as your gut recovers.

Facial and jaw injury, TMJ dysfunction and dental damage make chewing painful, and people quietly narrow their diet to whatever does not hurt.

What it looks at: what textures you can physically manage, how far your diet has narrowed, and the protein, calorie and micronutrient gaps that has created.

Why it helps: a soft diet is usually a low-protein diet, which directly slows healing. This ensures adequate nutrition while chewing remains difficult, and documents a limitation that no other assessment captures.

Where weight has fallen, intake has dropped, or a restricted diet has continued for some time.

What it looks at: weight history and rate of change, intake against your actual requirements, indicators of nutritional deficiency, and the practical and psychological reasons behind reduced eating.

Why it helps: malnourishment develops quietly and is rarely picked up until it is significant. Identifying it early prevents a second problem from establishing itself on top of your injuries.

Where an insurer or lawyer is involved, a Registered Dietitian’s assessment documents something no other report captures: how the collision has affected your ability to eat, and the nutritional consequences that follow.

What it looks at: digestive injury, jaw and dental limitations on eating, appetite change from pain, mood or medication, weight loss or gain, nutritional deficiency and malnourishment risk, and the effect on daily function.

Why it helps: it provides objective evidence of how profoundly your daily life has been affected, in an area usually overlooked entirely. Eating is fundamental, and a documented inability to eat normally speaks directly to the severity of your impairment.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney conditions and food allergies all become harder to manage when you are injured, less active, in pain and eating differently.

What it looks at: how your existing condition is currently controlled, what has changed since the accident, and where your usual management has become impractical.

Why it helps: it adapts your management to your current circumstances rather than expecting you to maintain a routine that is no longer possible. Letting a chronic condition slip during recovery creates problems that outlast the injury.

Available from age six. Children who have been in a collision may refuse food, regress in their eating, or lose weight at a stage when growth matters.

What it looks at: growth and weight against expected patterns, what has changed since the accident, mealtime behaviour and family dynamics around food, and any physical difficulty with eating.

Why it helps: it addresses the problem without turning mealtimes into another source of conflict in a household already under strain. We work with the family rather than issuing instructions.