Abstract
Because eating habits are inseparably linked with people’s physical health, effective behaviour interventions are highly demanded to promote healthy eating among older people. The aim of this systematic review was to identify effective diet interventions for older people and provide useful evidence and direction for further research. Three electronic bibliographic databases—PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection were used to conduct a systematic literature search based on fixed inclusion and exclusion criteria. English language peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2011 and 2016 were selected for data extraction and quality assessment. Finally, a total of 16 studies were identified. The studies’ duration ranged from three weeks to seven years. The majority of studies were carried out in European countries. Seven studies had a moderate quality while the remaining studies were at a less than moderate level. Three dietary educational interventions and all meal service related interventions reported improvements in older people’s dietary variety, nutrition status, or other health-related eating behaviours. Multicomponent dietary interventions mainly contributed to the reduction of risk of chronic disease. The results supported that older people could achieve a better dietary quality if they make diet-related changes by receiving either dietary education or healthier meal service. Further high-quality studies are required to promote healthy eating among older people by taking regional diet patterns, advanced information technology, and nudging strategies into account.
Highlights
According to a report from the United Nations, the proportion of people worldwide aged 60 years and over is predicted to increase by 56% between 2015 and 2030 [1]
After full-text reading and reading and screening, the remaining 19 articles (one literature review, seven systematic reviews, screening, the remaining 19 articles were retrieved, read, and studies that met the inclusion criteria were retained for articles) were retrieved, read, and studies that met the inclusion criteria were retained for data data extraction
Four dietary educational studies in this review showed either no significant effect between groups [34] or only positive results within groups when compared with the baseline [35,37,44], which was congruent with previous researches [45,46,47,48,49]
Summary
According to a report from the United Nations, the proportion of people worldwide aged 60 years and over is predicted to increase by 56% between 2015 and 2030 [1]. With respect to the health problems caused by aging processes, people are aware of the importance of good health and high quality of life in one’s later life [2]. A series of health problems may arise when people become older, such as chronic diseases [3], malnutrition [4], and falls [5]. Nutrients 2018, 10, 128 frequent complication, it has a strong relationship with the older person’s ill-health and disability [6]. Weight imbalance is related to the older person’s physical function and influences the quality of life [7,8]. Underweight and obesity as worldwide challenges are positively associated with mortality during the aging processes [9,10]. It is highly recommended that older people should be given effective interventions to enhance their health status and improve their living quality
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