"Eating To Death"

As physicians, we often talk about 'Do No Harm'. We also know that culturally we associate feeding loved ones as loving them. Can these two ideas go against one another? Are there situations when inadvertently we feed our loved ones to death? When patients with end stage dementia are unable to swallow their food, how do we help family see that they are getting to the end of their road? Talking about the benefits of pleasure feeding by mouth, as opposed to artificial nutrition by tubes, tackles these emotional situations.