Maggie's Mission Aged Care food: 'We’ve got to change and we can change'

Maggie Beer's latest TV show is a three-part series filmed at Meath Care's Dr Mary Surveyor Centre aged care home in Kingsley, Perth.

The 79-year-old cook and national treasure, whose face adorned a 60¢ Australian commemorative postage stamp in January 2014, said, "It was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done — there was no doubt about that.”

“I’m really proud of what we have done, but my gosh, I wanted to do so much more,” she admits, “and when you can’t do as much as you want, it is frustrating."

In Maggie's Mission, she works primarily with speech pathologist Natalie O’Brien, dietitian Emma Falconer and the home’s executive chef, Sasanka Peiris to introduce new recipes high in protein and full of flavour, using fresh ingredients and “solid cooking techniques,” designed around her mantra, “every mouthful counts”.

She also enlisted Gardening Australia expert Josh Bryne to overhaul the home's outdoor spaces to try to get residents to spend more time outdoors by making the areas more inviting and inclusive.

“I was horrified to hear the recent (aged care) Royal Commission findings, which revealed that 68% of Australians in residential aged care are either at risk of malnutrition or are malnourished,” she says in the opening moments of the first episode, before outlining the ways she hopes to enact real change at the aged care home.

“We’ve got to change and we can change,” she said.

“All it needs is training, education and leadership — but it also needs an openness to change; that’s where the magic happens, and then the energy happens.”

She paid credit to Meath Care for opening its doors to WA-based production company Artemis to make the series.

“I was hoping to show that if you can work with a team who are open to change, you can change the lives of the residents, by bringing in beautiful, simple food every day that would lead to an increase in their wellbeing,” she said.

In episode one, Maggie is filmed sampling some of the dining options available to residents.

“A sandwich can be dead in the mouth, and that’s how it feels,” she is filmed telling one of the residents.

Later, she gets results of some preliminary findings into the care home from Associate Professor Jade Cartwright from the University of Tasmania which show 78% of the residents assessed are found to be either at risk of malnutrition or malnourished.

Then, she invites Meath Care CEO Chris Roberts, the care management team and the board chairman to try the residents’ lukewarm lunch and asks for their feedback. She then offers them her version of the same dish, enhanced with additional protein and flavour (Maggie is trying to persuade them to stop using artificial additives in their food, encouraging them to make more meals from scratch using home-made stocks and brodos, quality bone broth).

Their reaction is underwhelming.

Maggie Beer’s Big Mission is on ABC and iView