Sustainable and nutritious food consumption for older adults

我们的老年人社区目前正面临肥胖和营养不良的健康挑战，有时两者同时存在。在肥胖的情况下，这可能会导致心血管疾病和2型糖尿病的风险增加；在营养不良的情况下，这可能会导致骨骼肌无力(肌肉无力)。针对这些健康挑战提出的解决方案往往依赖于个人改变生活方式(例如，使用应用程序遵循特定的饮食)。然而，当我们生活在一个鼓励过度消费几乎没有营养价值的食物的环境中时，坚持这样的饮食可能是极其具有挑战性的。此外，未能实现与饮食和体重相关的健康目标可能会导致“体重污名化”的经历。在这里，我们提出了一项服务，旨在改善老年人的整体饮食环境，并通过避免将责任推到个人身上来减少耻辱。我们将与食品生产商、养老院供应商和国民健康保险制度、超市和消费者合作，改变支持老年人健康的产品的可获得性、可及性和可接受性。我们进行的研究表明，食品的开发可以考虑老年人的健康，通过与老年人合作优化这些产品的呈现，可以提高这些食品的可接受性。这项服务将使特别是生产可持续和健康食品的中小企业能够获得专业知识和设备，以便为老年人社区优化其产品(而不必投资于昂贵的专业知识和设备本身)。

Our older adult community are currently facing the health challenges of obesity and malnutrition, sometimes both at the same time. This can result in increased risk of cardio-vascular disease and type 2 diabetes in the case of obesity and/ or sarcopenia (muscle weakness) in the case of malnutrition. Too often, the proposed solutions to these health challenges rely on an individual to make lifestyle changes (e.g., by following a particular diet using an app). However, sticking to such diets can be extremely challenging when we live in a food environment that encourages over-consumption of foods with little nutritional benefit. Moreover, failure to achieve health goals associated with eating and body weight can lead to the experience of 'weight stigmatisation'. Here we propose a service that aims to improve the overall eating environment for older adults and reduce stigma by avoiding placing responsibility on an individual. We will work with food producers, suppliers to care-homes and the NHS, supermarkets and consumers to change the availability, accessibility and acceptability of products that support the health of older adults. We have conducted research that suggests that foods can be developed with older adult health in mind and acceptability of these foods can be improved by working with older adults to optimise the presentation of these products. This service that will allow, in particular, SMEs producing sustainable and healthy foods, to access expertise and equipment to optimise their product for the older adult community (without having to invest in costly expertise and equipment themselves).