Nutritional, socioeconomic and health profile of elderly people attended at a nutrition school clinic in Southern Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this research is to characterize the elderly population attended at a Nutrition Clinic School and to relate anthropometric, socioeconomic, comorbidities, lifestyle and eating habits variables. Retrospective cross-sectional study with alysis of secondary data, carried out by surveying data contained in the medical records of non-institutionalized elderly attended at a Clinical School of Nutrition belonging to the State University of the Midwest, in the city of Guarapuava-PR. Sociodemographic, economic and health variables were collected. In addition, the food consumption of the population in question was analyzed using 24-hour recalls and compared with there commendations. A total of 122 elderly people with a mean age of 65.9 ± 5.3 years participated in the study. An association was found between overweight and the presence of chronic diseases (p<0.001) and education (p<0.001). Most (77.9%) of the elderly attended were classified as overweight, of which 83.2% had diabetes mellitus and/or arterial hypertension. Regarding food consumption, inadequate consumption of dietary fiber, sodium and calcium was found. It was verified that the majority of elderly people with excess weight had diabetes mellitus and/or arterial hypertension and had low levels of education. It was observed that the consumption of fibers, vitamin A and sodium were inadequate.