Aspects of Community Nutrition for Elderly Patients

Diploma Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Health - Nutritional Science, grade: 3.0, University of Vienna (Ernährungswissenschaften), language: English, abstract: In the year 2000 I started to work at ward departments in an hospital in Helsinki, Finland. During my working experience I saw lots of very skinny, old people. In such institutions optimal medical care and nutrition service should be provided.What is going wrong in community nutrition?How can you improve the situation?In the beginning they were only offering four meals per day. In the summer of 2006 I noticed that a fifth meal has been added- as a sweet snack! Is this really the right and healthy way to increase the energy intake of elderly people?This is a shortened version of my Master's Thesis, because I am not publishing the composition of meals planned by the catering company.My intention of this thesis is to give an overview of the nutritional situation of elderly people in an hospital. Nutrition in hospital is still being treated like an orphan child. Medications and medical care has more priority.In chapter "Nutrition and Elderly People" an overview of physiological changes and a description of nutrients and its relevance to elderly people is presented. The next chapter deals with diseases that are associated with higher age. Those should be kept in mind for planning community nutrition.The chapter "Community Nutrition" is also based on the information from the previous chapters to found a nutrition that suits best the needs of elderly patients living in a community.