Healthy eating for older adults is the most important factor, along with sport, in maintaining a balance and a healthy life. Because a healthy diet allows to increase the years of life in an exponential way. This happens because maintaining a healthy diet means minimizing the chances of the appearance of lethal diseases such as cancer.

A few months ago, a news item appeared that gave a lot to talk about. It spoke about how palm oil has a negative impact on health. It increases the appearance of cancer, or rather, facilitates its spread or metastasis. For this reason, the popular ingredient is excluded from any list for a healthy diet.

Ingredients such as palm oil encourage the spread of such virulent diseases as cancer.

Healthy eating for older adults: Nutrition tips

Food in older adults and children is a more important and delicate factor. It is not uncommon to find older people who have lost the motivation to cook and maintain a good diet. These people need a little support to recover the food stability that we all need.

This support can be provided by anyone who knows how to manage the household tasks and anyone who takes care of their family. Tasks related to diet and cooking can be covered by a caregiver 10 hours a week.

– The most common advice to take into account is to have 4-5 meals a day, these being smaller amounts than we are used to. Especially the dinners, this is commonly known to facilitate the digestion before sleeping and therefore it is suggested that they are usually light.

– Eat proteins by diversifying their origin. The optimum is that 50% are of animal origin and 50% vegetable. Although this sounds complex to promote healthy eating for older adults.

The dilemma of carbohydrates in older adults

Carbohydrates should represent 50-60% of the total energy consumed by older adults. And a strong distinction must also be made about the origin of the hydrates, so that priority is given to those coming from vegetables, fruits, vegetables and legumes. They are known as complex carbohydrates.

It is recommended that simple carbohydrates, that is, those containing sugars and usually coming from industrial bakery, be reduced by 10%.

The focus is usually on fats

Indeed, fat is the devil of our diet. And there is also a distinction from those that come from animals. These are meat, cheese, butter, sausages and vegetables (such as coconut and palm oil. It is not recommended that these fats account for more than 10% of the total consumed since priority must be given to those that come from chicken, tuna, salmon… That is, the polyunsaturated ones.

An excess of fat in the diet can be especially harmful for older adults.

The daily lifesavers of fiber and vitamin D

Fiber is the healthiest substance for the digestive and nutritional balance of both older adults and other people. And it is recommended to eat 25 grams daily. So that we make ourselves an idea, an apple of considerable size oscillates between 4-5 grams in fiber.

It is important to take many cereals, fruits with skin and legumes.

Nevertheless the vitamin D is more difficult to find since it is generally in fatty fish.

Healthy eating for older adults: Liquids as an essential element

The daily and permanent intake of liquids to keep people hydrated is an obsession in summer and forgotten in other seasons. Many doctors only prescribe water intake to older adults on a recurring basis. And this is an excellent clue of the utmost importance.

Doing it at regular intervals and even if you are not thirsty is very important.

Although it can also be said that wine in moderate doses is also a point that does not fail in any of the professional recommendations.

Healthy eating for older adults

In summary, these are Nomenial’s top tips for healthy eating for older people:

-Drink fluids regularly, even if you are not thirsty.

-Encourage consumption of fish over meat.

-Avoid sugars and all kinds of industrial products.

-Light dinners for better digestion.

-The consumption of fiber, fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereals is the essential advice.

-All this combined with gentle daily exercise.

A healthy diet is vital to prolong the quality of life of older adults

For this reason, it is important to count on a punctual or recurrent support in order to recover certain habits that many families agree that their older adults have lost. Having a person who watches over and takes care of the basic nutritional level for 2 hours a day is a great value at a very affordable price for all families.

In the next post we will talk about the myths and falsehoods about nutrition in older adults.

Read more at https://medlineplus.gov/nutritionforolderadults.html