Higher dietary variety is associated with better nutritional status in frail elderly people
Section snippets
Subjects and Methods
Volunteers were recruited among residents of the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged, a 725-bed facility providing long-term care of elderly people. Among the residents, 98 people aged 72 to 98 years volunteered for the Boston FICSIT (Frailty and Injuries: Cooperative Studies of Intervention Techniques) study. The FICSIT study was a randomized controlled trial designed to assess the impact of exercise and nutritional supplementation on functional status (22). For the purpose of these
Subject Characteristics
Subject characteristics are summarized in Table 1. Detailed baseline characteristics have been previously reported by Fiatarone et al (22). Our study included 36 men and 62 women who completed the baseline 3-day weighed food records. The mean age of the group was 87.1±0.6 years. The most prevalent medical conditions included arthritis (50% of subjects, n=49), pulmonary disease (44%, n=44), osteoporotic fracture (44%, n=43), hypertension (35%, n=34), and cancer (25%, n=24). Among subjects, 51%
Discussion
Dietary variety has not previously been used to evaluate diet in frail nursing home residents. We hypothesized that restricted dietary choices among elderly persons living in nursing homes, as well as poor health and declining functional status, would result in a narrow range of dietary variety scores in this population. Our results, however, show a large range in 3-day dietary variety score and fruit and vegetable variety score and mean values remarkably similar to those reported in other
Applications
Variety assessment offers an alternative model to explore the relationship between food consumption and various aspects of health and nutrition-related diseases. This method is straightforward and, with minimal training, easily measured. Dietary variety methods could serve as a useful screening tool for identifying individuals at nutritional risk while simultaneously offering an intervention for improving nutrient intake and nutritional status. Using dietary variety as a screening tool for
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