"Health from eating" series | National Nutrition Week: @The elderly around you, this dietary advice is very important

Recently, a review article published in the British medical journal The Lancet warned that one-quarter of the elderly (65 years and above) are malnourished or are at risk of malnutrition. Scientific nutrition intake is the cornerstone of ensuring the health of the elderly, helping to maintain body functions, prolong life, and prevent various common diseases in the elderly, thereby improving the quality of life of the elderly. Improving the nutrition of the elderly can start from the following aspects.

Develop good eating habits. As people age, their gastrointestinal function tends to decline. Eating more at one time makes it difficult for food to be digested and absorbed. It is recommended to eat small and frequent meals in daily diet. It should be noted that three meals and snacks should be eaten at regular times and in fixed quantities. Snacks can be eaten 2 to 3 times a day. Each meal should ensure food diversity. Snacks should mainly consist of fruits, nuts, etc. Special medical formula foods can also be used under the guidance of a doctor or nutritionist.

Make a reasonable diet. For the elderly, the staple food should be a combination of coarse and fine. In addition to the commonly eaten rice, steamed bread, etc., you can also choose millet, corn, oats and other grains as staple food; in addition, potatoes and sweet potatoes can also be used as staple food. At the same time, try to have vegetables at every meal. Different kinds of vegetables can be eaten together, and you can eat more dark leafy vegetables (such as rapeseed, green vegetables, spinach, purple cabbage, etc.). In addition to vegetables, different kinds of fruits can be eaten in daily diet. The amount of each fruit can be consumed in small amounts, but try to make the variety rich. It is recommended to eat 300-500 grams of fresh vegetables and 200-350 grams of fresh fruits every day. At the same time, please note that vegetables and fruits cannot be interchanged.

Avoid wrong dietary concepts. In the eyes of many elderly people, meat is unhealthy. They simply equate eating meat with high blood lipids and blindly pursue a strict vegetarian model, believing that the elderly should mainly eat a light diet. It should be noted that a light diet is based on food diversity. A strict vegetarian diet can easily cause a lack of iron, zinc, calcium and fat-soluble vitamins in the body, and can also cause anemia, hypoproteinemia, osteoporosis, low immunity, etc., which are harmful to the health of the elderly. It is recommended that each meal should have a certain amount of animal food, which can be replaced by pork, mutton, beef and other livestock meat, chicken, duck and other poultry meat, fish, shrimp and eggs. These foods should be paired with vegetables.

Correct eating habits and reasonable nutritional combinations have an important impact on the health of the elderly. In daily life, we should take the dietary issues of the elderly seriously and provide them with more comprehensive and balanced nutrition to make their later years healthier and happier.

This article was scientifically reviewed by Yang Zhiping, deputy chief physician of the Nutrition Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University.