Sensory acceptability of traditional food preparations by elderly people

People's food choices progressively change with ageing. In particular, elderly people show a decrease in the pleasantness associated with food intake as a result of both physiological and psychological factors. The aims of this work were to investigate the most important aspects related to food for the elderly and to determine whether there is an evolution in food preferences during life course. This study involved 48 (36 females and 12 males) institutionalised elderly people aged between 57 and 98 (mean age 82.5). Subjects were selected for their physiological and cognitive ability to carry out the evaluation. In the first step of this work a focus group was carried out using seven institutionalised elderly people. It was shown that the basic criteria associated with food choice were: simple-cooking, tradition and sensory aspects. In the second step subjects rated the liking of 11 first courses using a nine-point hedonic scale. The 11 first courses were selected to include dishes that could plausibly be evaluated as traditional Italian first courses, simple-cooked/familiar first courses, simple-cooked/unfamiliar first courses and complicated-cooked/unfamiliar first courses, according to the observations drawn from focus group. The first courses preferred by elderly people were found to be those classified as traditional Italian preparations, while the first courses that obtained the lowest liking rating were found to be those classified as simple-cooked/ unfamiliar and complicated-cooked/unfamiliar dishes. Finally subjects answered a questionnaire to investigate whether there was a relationship between the variables obtained from the focus group and food preferences for a particular first course by elderly people.