Appliance of domiciliary nutrition instruction method for the elderly people requiring long-term care in Japan

Background In Japan, elderly people aged 65 and over account for more than one fifth of the nation’s population. To add to this, the number of aged households is increasing year by year. Because elderly people are preferential to have tender and non-fatty foods in general, they are prone to biased nutrition status. According to the result of a National Health and Nutrition Survey, the low weight male who aged 60-69 and over percentage has increased from 7.2% (1987) to 12.3% in 2009. Also, female is 18.6% to 22.3%. Therefore both male and female has increased about 5%. lt is predicted that nutritional management for elderly person requiring long-term care but living in their home may become difficult. Establishing the novel nutritional guidance for such elderly person with their favor is one of the most important challenges for clinical dietitian in Japan. In this study, we carried out two questionnaire surveys, in order to understand nutritional status of elderly people requiring long-term care but living in their home and find out dietary preference of elderly people.