Is two hours a normal amount of time to eat for someone with dementia who no longer wears dentures? And, what about vitamins?

If she likes soups and the facility makes good ones you might want to include that in her daily menu, you can fit a lot of good nutrition in a bowl of soup and it is easier to eat when you are toothless. If she's losing weight snacks and supplements like ensure and boost offered in addition to meals may be a better option than spending hours on a meal, that has to be tiresome for both her and the staff.

And I'm a little doubtful about any facility actually being able to take so much time over meals, I imagine that any help is pretty much limited to the first 20 minutes before they need to attend to someone else. I sometimes visited my mom's nursing home in the morning before plates were cleared away from the dining room to check how much she was eating, very often her chart was marked as having finished a full meal when evidence clearly showed less than half was eaten.

“Normal”? Maybe “permissible” or “typical” or “reasonable” instead?

Dementia doesn’t distinguish or define the damage it does to he aging brain.

My own mom lost all of her teeth before fifty, and refused dentistry (she was a severe agoraphobic).

She lived for 85 years on her own home cooked meals, typically ground beef, applesauce, a boiled potato, butter, coffee with heavy cream, and cookies.
When she had a severe stroke (at 85), her blood work was described being like a typical 55 year old woman.

After being hospitalized for TWO DAYS following the stroke, the neurologist sent her home, where she resumed providing her own care until she fell and broke her hip at 89.

If your mom is enjoying her food and taking a long time to savor it, and is doing well otherwise, why mess with success?

IF there’s a quick remedy to the denture rejection, try a fix, but if hospice and the MC staff feel she does well, maybe not.

Vitamins? I’d want a recommendation from her physician or a staff dietitian before I’d try that.

Good for you for remaining open to making her life the best possible situation for her.

It is a normal length of time, in that that is often just how long it takes for the person to finish a standard helping of food and for no particular reason other than that it just *does.*

However. If you imagine what sort of state your own favourite meal would be in by the end of two hours, then it's easy to think what this is doing for the person's appetite and enjoyment of her food. A 2 hour old French fry is not a thing to gladden the heart.

I'd go for: smaller, more frequent meals; foods which she is able to pick up and enjoy unassisted; if possible, some extra attention to finding out what is really irresistible for her and (don't give it to her so much she gets tired of it but) putting that on the menu.

Pureeing what she eats may finish off her appetite altogether. Enjoyment of food is about colour, texture and mouth-feel, not just about taste or smell. Speaking of which - has she had Covid?

Refusing her dentures - what have they done about that (apart from quite correctly not attempting to force her, I mean)? Mouth and gums okay, any remaining teeth okay (if they're partials), no soreness or unpleasant taste or other problems? No damage to the plates, making them uncomfortable? And especially, if she needs help to put them in, the help must be gentle but not too tentative - it's a mistake to try poking them in without moving the person's lips. I usually use my little or ring finger in the manner of a shoe horn, just to ease the end in.

Vitamin D and calcium tablets from any reputable manufacturer will all be equally good. Is she actually deficient or are you just covering the bases on advice?

Thank you for your help! Mom is able to feed herself on her own with utensils and yes, there are caregivers that sit with her as she's eating. She loves food and just takes a lot longer to eat due to not wearing her dentures anymore. Hospice visits my mom as well, and they didn't say much about it except that she just takes a long time to eat. She is healthy, and does swallow her food because her food is no longer on her plate when she's done. I'll ask the hospice doctor to visit her and see if something needs to be done. I was just wondering if this is normal because hospice didn't make a big deal of it at all, but I thought that's a long time to be sitting and eating. The caregivers take mom to eat about 20-30 minutes early because she takes so long to eat.

Of course that's not normal. Is anyone observing her during meals, is she in the dining room or eating in her room?
There have been people on the forum who have spent hours coaxing food into a loved one but I've always believed that eating is one of the last things those near the end of their lives have control over, and anyone who takes hours to eat either is no longer interested in food or they have a physical reason that should be managed. She needs to be evaluated to understand why it is taking her so long to eat, as well as not having teeth she may also be experiencing difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), which is common in later stage dementia. She may also be losing the ability to feed herself effectively; many of the people at my mom's nursing home needed to be spoon fed because they either could not physically manipulate the utensils or they lacked the initiative to do so, others simply needed to be prompted to sit and eat and redirected to continue to eat or they would forget to eat or wander off part way through a meal.