Appetites in retirement: the organized feeding of old people.

At the end of a day of papers covering almost the Seven Ages of Man it is fitting that the last of them should deal with the problem of feeding elderly people. Fortunately I am not called upon to give a scientific treatise on the part played by nutrition in the ageing processes because our knowledge is lamentably small. I t is, however, as important to assess the effect of growing old, with all its implications, on the individual’s attitude to feeding, which can be done a little more readily. The feeding of old people has not hitherto been a community responsibility as a specialized activity. The old Poor Law Institutions were the only places where the aged would be found in any numbers, and here they were accorded no separate consideration but were fed in the same way and by the same standards as any other inmates. T o judge by the figures in the late Professor Drummond’s book The Englishman’s Food, recently revised by Dorothy Hollingsworth (Drummond & Wilbraham, 1957), they were not so badly off nutritionally even if their dietary regime owed little to inspiration. However, in view of the present-day population trends which give an estimated figure for the 1980’s of one person in five being over pensionable age, the subject of this paper is timely. If we compare this section of the community with others considered in this Symposium a major characteristic emerges. This group is relatively static. The child grows and learns, the hospital patient in the main recovers, the factory and service groups present an age range, but the old merely get older with an aggravation of those difficulties inherent in the condition. I am defining here, of course, those old people who are having to exhibit some degree of dependance on community help, not those who are still living an active life. It might be useful to outline some of the features which characterize the group and which have a bearing on the part played by food and catering.