Social welfare programs support the income, education, nutrition, and medical care needs of many of this country's elders and children. Over the past twenty years, however, three times as many children as elders have lived in poverty, and poverty rates for children have consistently exceeded those for the elderly. Given the continued disparity in poverty rates, it is important to track levels o...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Malnutrition in the elderly is a serious problem, prevalent in both hospitals and care homes. Due to the absence of a gold standard for malnutrition, herein we evaluate the efficacy of five nutritional screening tools developed or used for the elderly. SUBJECTS/METHODS Elected medical records of 141 elderly patients (86 men and 55 women, aged 73.5 ± 5.2 years) hospitaliz...

Objectives: To compare the effects of living alone versus living in a group setting on the health, nutrition, personal cognition and general living function of a group of elderly Taiwanese. We also hypothesized that older adults living alone would have poorer indices of function and health than would elderly persons living in a group setting. Design and participants: We conducted a cross-sectio...

OBJECTIVE As part of a larger study designed to understand how to protect the food and nutrition security of individuals living in a protected area of Gabon, we assessed their nutritional status and its relationship to dietary adequacy and health status. DESIGN A 7 d food consumption survey was conducted during each of the two major seasons using a weighing method. Data were also collected on...

For many Americans, dental coverage is merely a matter of cosmetics, a pretty smile. But for the elderly, a dental condition can affect nutrition, health, and financial well-being. In her note, Amanda Schwob explores the dental exclusion to Medicare, a provision of great concern to the elderly. Ms. Schwob seeks to define the scope of the dental exclusion by means of the plain language of the Me...

In recent years, the concept of nutrition in patients with tumour diseases has been changing very significantly. The article discusses the pathogenesis of tumour cachexia and sarcopenia, which have been intensively studied, particularly in the last ten years. The possibilities and modern approaches in nutritional support in oncology are reviewed with a special emphasis on the group of elderly p...

The ‘sandwich generation’ has been conceptualised as those mid-life adults who simultaneously raise dependent children and care for frail elderly parents. Such a combination of dependants is in fact very unusual, and the more common situation is when adults in late mid-life or early old age have one or more surviving parents and adult but still partly dependent children. It can be hypothesised ...

This essay suggests additional sociocultural considerations that might improve data collection and analysis. The IUNS initiative on food habits and the elderly offers a theoretical and methodological framework to relate nutritional and non-nutritional factors to health outcomes and longevity. The research is designed to test hypotheses about the relationships between diet and disease; and migra...