A Study of The Dietary Pattern, Nutrients Intake and Nutritional Status of Elderly in Alexandria

Abstract

Malnutrition is a common public health problem in the elderly and is often associated with increased morbidity and reduced quality of life. This study was initiated to investigate the nutritional status, nutrients intake and dietary pattern of elderly males and females in Alexandria. The sample of the study was taken from two elderly clubs and two social clubs and included 131 males and 116 female aged 60 years and over. Each subject was privately interviewed to collect information on socio-demographic data, dietary pattern, appetite status and causes of its loss, nutrition related problems, preferred and avoided foods. The nutritional status was assessed by measuring height and weight that were used for the calculation of the BMI. The daily nutrients intake was assessed using the 24 hours dietary recall method. The results show that underweight was more prevalent among males (34.3%) while overweight and obesity were more prevalent among females. Obesity was also more prevalent among high income group (21.6%) while underweight was highly prevalent among low income elderly (35.2%). The nutrient density was acceptable with proteins providing around 12% of the caloric intake, fats around 28% and carbohydrates provided around 60% of the calories. A high proportion of males (31.27%) received less than two third of the energy RDAs, while 39.7% and 31.6% of the females received less than 67% of the iron and calcium requirements. Occasional and frequent loss of appetite was more common among females and was mostly induced by social factors (33.8%), health problems (30.9%) and emotional stress (19.1%). Shopping for food represented a major problem for the elderly (27.1%) followed by chewing problem (23.5%), self feeding (20.7%) and recent weight loss (17.4%). The results show that more males (29.8%) were consuming special diet as compared with females (19.8%). The majority of the females consumed two meals daily (37.1%) while 57.3% of the males consumed three meals daily. Vitamin and mineral supplement were most common among the elderly. Animal protein and fruits were the most preferred foods and vegetables (23.1%), spicy foods (19.4%) and fried foods (19.0%) were the most avoided foods. The results confirm that both undernutrition, overweight and obesity are prevalent among the elderly and are associated with inadequate dietary food intake and poor dietary pattern which necessitates the planning and implementation of a nutrition intervention program to improve the nutritional status of the elderly.