Diet quality in elderly Portuguese households

Abstract

Overall, diet quality was low and decreased over time but lonely elderly female and elderly couple households had higher values of HDIr. Adherence to a healthier diet was associated with lower educational level of the household head and location of the household in less urbanized areas.

Nutrition knowledge, dietary patterns and anthropometric indices of older persons in four peri-urban communities in Ga West municipality, Ghana

“…Diet quality of more than half of the respondents was poor. Similar results have been found in other studies27,28. A lot of factors affect the quality of diets of older persons and consequently, their nutrition and health status.…”

“…Adequate diets and healthy dietary patterns improve nutritional status10, decreases risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases associated with cognitive decline25, reduce morbidity and mortality and increase longevity26. Nonetheless, dietary intakes of most older persons have been shown to be of poor quality27,28. Also, nutrition knowledge of most older persons is poor29 and usually weakly associated with dietary intakes thereby not translating in optimum nutritional status30.…”

Home-Based Intervention Program to Reduce Food Insecurity in Elderly Populations Using a TV App: Study Protocol of the Randomized Controlled Trial Saúde.Come Senior

“…The themes for each week and consequently the contents of each video on nutrition and diet tips for healthy eating were chosen considering the main concerns on diet, in particular the main risk factors for noncommunicable diseases that are associated with unhealthy diets and the nutritional requirements for elderly people [27-29]. The low-cost healthy recipes are chef-created recipes and were specifically developed for our program by a popular Portuguese TV chef with a consulting nutritionist.…”

Environment as ‘Brain Training’: A review of geographical and physical environmental influences on cognitive ageing

“…Longitudinal studies, for example, have found associations between cognitive decline and high levels of traffic-related air pollution (Power et al, 2011) or lead in the area of residence (Shih et al, 2006;Weisskopf et al, 2007), as well as long term exposure to particulate matter (Pedata et al, 2014;Weuve et al, 2012), which are more frequent in urban areas. Other studies suggest better dietary habits for rural dwellers (Huot et al, 2004;Kabagambe et al, 2002;Kun et al, 2013;Morgan et al, 2000;Santos et al, 2014;Scarmeas et al, 2014), with important implications for cognition considering that diet is associated with active lifestyles, cardiovascular health and cognitive benefits in older age (Otaegui-Arrazola et al, 2014;Spencer, 2008), as well as involved in mediating the association between vitamin D deficiency and cognitive decline (Buell et al, 2009;Llewellyn et al, 2010;Miller, 2009;Wilkins et al, 2006), especially in living areas subject to sunlight deprivation (Romero-Ortuno et al, 2011). While acknowledging the importance of air quality and diet in understanding cognitive ageing, together with the important role of biological and sociocultural intervening factors, the present work focuses on physical characteristics of the environment, e.g.…”