This is chicken barbecue and beer, but specially
designed for dysphagia patients.
So you don't have to give up on your favorite foods.
And booze!
Hey everyone, it's Elise Hu, NPR Asia correspondent
in Tokyo, Japan, where we're going to try
out specialized food for senior citizens -- or
as the slogan reads,
"Bringing continued pleasure of eating until the last breath."
Japan is the most aged society in the world;
because of this, trouble swallowing food -
- medically known as dysphagia -- has become a widespread issue.
More Japanese die from choking deaths per
year than they die from traffic accidents.
To help fight this growing problem, Engay
foods has developed easy-to-swallow meals
that still look like the original food.
The demo I watched was with salmon.
All right, so she's taking a salmon saute,
she's going to mix this together with a blender.
Now we're going to add the gelling agent,
which is key to creating Engay foods,
as they call it here.
I'm going to be honest -- this doesn't seem
very appetizing right now.
She's going to use the Saran Wrap to form
it into the shape of fish.
And she's shaped it into looking like a slice
of fish.
Looks much more appetizing now, right?
And it's designed so it won't get stuck in
your throat.
OK, let's see some examples of some other
Engay foods that were originally formed,
broken down, gel agent added to it, and then re-formed!
Check it out: This is yakitori, so it's supposed
to be barbecued chicken skewers.
And then there's even beer.
And then this is the Japanese New Year stew,
in which all ingredients
have been broken down and turned into Engay foods.
OK, we are with professor ... uh.
Tell me your name.
Shibamoto.
Shibamoto-san!
I was fascinated by that stat on accidental
deaths, that after 2006 more Japanese were
dying of choking deaths than traffic accidents.
That seems astounding.
We had anticipated that; however, we are very
much surprised at the speed
at which it has reached this level.
So when people get older their physical strength
gets weaker and weaker, but this happens so
gradually that most of the people are unaware
that their physical ability is deteriorating.
OK, so this is the moment of truth.
Check it out, this is what we're testing.
We've got orange juice and white wine and
both have been thickened
with the thickening agent, the gel.
All right, this is the, you can see here this
has a thickening agent in it.
It's the thickened orange juice.
This isn't as syrupy as I expected it would be --
it's as if orange juice had a bunchof cornstarch in it.
Ok, I'm preggo, but I'm going to try some
of this white wine too
because thickened white wine, got to give it a whirl.
Ok, the white wine is way better, but that
could just be because it's alcohol.
Here we go.
Note, I am not chewing -- I'm just breaking
this down with my tongue.
It tastes like -- it tastes like salmon. 
It tastes like salmon.
All right, we've tried it and now I'm going
to rate it.
I'm going to be honest, this is not the most
delicious food I've ever eaten.
But we're all getting one day closer to death
with each day that we live,
so this is the food of the future, folks. Might as well try it.
This is kind of a morbid one, huh?
