He has moderate dementia. Mom is concerned with his weight gain. He prefers to eat lunch meat, cheese, crackers, fruit, ice cream and all sweets. Dad eats all the yogurt before Mom can have some or the rest of her Instant Breakfast she has saved for herself. He sneaks food when no one is in the kitchen or while Mom is sleeping because he knowsshe disapproves. But he takes 2 meatballs, one teaspoon peas at dinner so Mom fixes his plate with a bit more food. We bu yvery few sweets for them and Mom keeps fruit and extra boxes graham crackers etc. in her room, putting out days portion at a time.
You know, there will come a time in both of your parents' lives that you will pray that they reach for a snack. Tell mom to stop obsessing about it, and change your shopping style. Since he can only eat what you bring into the house, shop with nutrition in mind. I say let him eat what he wants.
Something you can do is work with your father's preferences, instead of worrying about the changes so much. Maybe he would like things like a salad with a boiled egg and some fruit. Or perhaps for dinner he would like one of the breaded fish fillets with some potato and green beans. These meals would be light and still nutritious (if salt is not a problem for him).
If he is gaining weight, it can be a problem. My mother is in the same stage now where she snacks on fattening things when I'm not looking. The only thing to do is what you are doing -- make them unavailable except what it is okay for him to have. It sounds like your mom is doing everything right. She may want to stop buying the things that are very fattening, maybe just buying an individual yogurt or two and not buying the instant breakfast. It's good that your dad has an appetite, but too much weight makes it harder to stay mobile.
Really, it sounds like you are doing just about as well as can be expected without locking up the food. That would probably be very upsetting, though, so I know you don't want to do that if you don't have to.
Now my parents have a lot of snacks, oh my gosh all the chocolate cupcakes, Little Debbies, ice cream, etc. but that is because their taste buds are also in age related decline, and sweets is what they can still taste. Dad loves his grapes, which is good :)
I always believed once you reach a certain age you should eat what you want. My parents are in their 90's so apparently they are doing something right. So I am not going to make notice of all those sweets.
What I gradually realized was that I can't change this but I can modify it. So I get pies now instead of cupcakes, cakes and really sugary foods. At least pies have fruit in them. They're still high in sugar, but better than cakes or cookies.
You might try doing the shopping and gradually decreasing the sugary foods, substituting them with sweet fresh fruits and nibblers such as carrots.
Ref. the food, It's difficult to get people to eat something they don't want. It's only my opinion, but unless you are trying to control blood sugar, I think seniors should eat what they want. When someone is 80 years old, to me, they should get the foods they want as long as it's not causing them pain.
You queried D/Cing Fosamax and Lipitor. Actually I think that doctor was very wise. Google Fosamax and class action suits; you'll find that Fosamax has been implicated to other fractures including something known as osteonecrosis of the jaw and more recently to femur fractures (this is very unsettling). Lipitor and other statins are notorious for having dangerous side effects.
There are other osteoporosis drugs besides Fosamax; one internist told me that the choice of drug should address the specific cause of calcium loss, and that she would do tests to determine what that cause was rather than just prescribing something like Fosamax or a tv star drug.
It was a more targeted approach than just prescribe the drug which so far I've seen seems to be quite a favorite sample of drug reps who distribute it to doctors.
Lipitor also has serious side effects and has been linked to development of Type II diabetes.
Obviously there are trade-offs in both cases, but there are also natural, non harmful methods of addressing osteoporosis and high cholesterol. JMHO. It's not my intention to foster an argument about these drugs, just to share an different approach to viewing them as.