No abstract

To maintain wellbeing, independence and nourishment of elderly population, one promising strategy is to provide home care by delivering food using “meals on wheels” (MoW) system. Even when the food is home‐delivered, the difficulties encountered by elderlies during the overall eating process can be a limiting factor. Hence, the objective of this self‐reported study was to explore the difficulty perception in the entire eating process from opening up the package, reheating, hand manipulation and oral processing of the food to bolus swallowing in 405 elderly consumers from five European countries (Finland, France, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom) with three different levels of dependency (category 1: participants living at home with help needed for food purchasing; category 2: participants living at home who need help for meal preparation or meal delivery; category 3: participants living in nursing homes/sheltered accommodation). Frequencies of responses and cross tabulation test were calculated for the difficulties perceived. Results show that the most difficult package to open was the cap irrespective of country or dependency levels (at P < 0.05). Although, glass was the most preferred packaging material, category (P = 0.034) and country (P = 0.001) had significant influence. Self‐feeding dependency was correlated with the eating difficulties perceived, category 1 participants did not perceive difficulties in the meal preparation and reported minimal difficulties in the hand manipulation and oral processing (<30%), whilst the difficulties perceived by categories 2 and 3 were significantly higher (∼60% of participants). The insights generated might be helpful for designing efficient MoW systems with appropriate user‐friendly features. Practical Applications Ageing population is in significant increment in Europe. For elderlies, who are unable to cook due to a various forms of functional incapability, “meals on wheels” (MoW) is a promising approach to extend their independence. In this work, difficulties in the eating process (opening of packaging, meal preparation and self‐feeding) of European elderly population with different levels of self‐eating independency have been investigated using self‐reporting from 405 participants. The most difficult packaging to open was the screw‐cap. Individuals who needed help for only food purchasing did not perceive difficulties in meal preparation and oral processing. Dental status was driving difficulty perception during biting and chewing. It is expected that with the insights generated in this study, MoW operators will improve the packaging in the meals; provide adaptive cutleries and design food with suitable texture ensuring optimum and easy oral processing.

The number of elderly people is growing in Europe. A decrease in gustatory capacities (detection, identification, discrimination) is associated with aging. In the literature, discrimination abilities have been studied mainly in aqueous model solutions, but less is known about sensitivity in real food matrices. Moreover, in foods, taste interactions can occur and modify perceptions (masking effect). This study aimed to compare the discrimination abilities of elderly people and younger adults when tasting apple purées and hypothesized that: discrimination abilities are lower in a group of elderly people (H1) and that taste interactions can modify discrimination performances (H2). A total of 105 young adults (18-40 years-old) and 130 elderly people (65+ years-old) were recruited in France and Poland. Their discrimination abilities were measured for sweet and sour tastes in apple purées. Pairs of apple purées with different sugar/acid concentrations were presented to participants and they were asked to indicate the sweetest/sourest sample. The results showed that the performances of the elderly people group were as good as those of the young adults group for sweetness (chi 2 = 0.036, p = 0.850) and sourness (chi 2 = 0.271, p = 0.603) discrimination. For both groups, a difference of 10 g/kg of sucrose or 0.25 g/kg of malic acid was enough to discriminate two samples (p < 0.001). In our experimental conditions, no significant masking effect was found. These results could help food industries to develop new fruit-based foods that match the sensory perceptions of elderly people.