FOOD & DRINK
THE NUTRI-GENERATION GAME
We’re living in an age of extremes, and the dichotomy between young and old has never
been greater. Here, Rebecca Bridgement, Managing Director at Radish, looks at the changing dietary needs of these two distinct groups and how caterers are choosing to respond.
Nutrition through life The demographic of the UK is shifting – with people aged 65 and over exceeding the under-fives for the first time in history. Moreover, millennials are choosing not to have large families, if have any children at all. We’re looking down the lens of an ageing population, and as such, the discourse around the elderly has heat up in recent years.
Assisted-living is a relatively new phenomenon. The first care home was reportedly founded in the 1920s, but today there are care homes in the thousands - worth an estimated £15.9bn a year in the UK. The pressing issue for caterers in the assisted-living sector is undernourishment. Public perceptions of the elderly being thin and frail are misguided – and mask what is in fact a big issue. The elderly’s nutritional requirements have not been well defined, and the majority are simply not getting a diet tailored to their bodily needs.
On the flip side, children’s diets have always been a hotly politicised topic. Margaret Thatcher was called the ‘milk snatcher’ when she announced the termination of the provision of free milk to junior school children as education secretary in 1971. It was a nickname that would haunt her career thereon. Currently, childhood obesity is one of the
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greatest social crises of our time, and a third of children aged 2-15 are overweight or obese. This has prompted government strategies such as the Childhood Obesity Plan, initiated in 2016 to intervene and support healthier choices in the hope of drastically reducing the levels of obesity over the next ten years.
So what’s the commonality between the two? Both are manifestations of malnutrition, and both are preventable. Additionally, crises such as this are costing the NHS; in 2012 the estimated expenditure of malnutrition was £19.6bn per year. The NHS is struggling to carry the weight, and contract caterers can play a part in tackling both.
We need to talk about diets Ageing brings not only vulnerability of malnutrition, but also chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and arthritis. Diet plays a vital role in maintaining health regardless of age, but it is perhaps at its most complicated for assisted-living. Attempts to provide seniors with adequate nutrition often encounter practical problems – as lean body mass and basal metabolic rate decline with age, an older person’s energy requirement per kilogram of body weight is also reduced. Hence the typical loss of appetite. That said, the need for some nutrients are reduced, whilst
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