Lynchburg Business

Serving Up the Good Stuff: How to Eat Healthy and Be Happy in the Golden Years

Issue: July 2010 by Kimberly Feldkamp in Inside The Magazine, Senior Services

One of my favorite people is my 91-year-old grandma, Mildred. She’s very fiery, friendly and smart, and starts her mornings with a crossword puzzle, a cup of coffee and some sort of delicious pastry. Her favorites include blueberry muffins, Krispy Kreme donuts and coffeecake.

“I’m 90 years old,” she said the night she ate a bag of popcorn and called it dinner. “I can eat whatever I want.”

And we, her loving family, mostly agree with her thought process. Now Grandma Mildred doesn’t exist solely on donuts and coffee. My mom helps her grocery shop and ensures her cart and cabinets are full of fresh fruits, veggies, pastas and proteins. But like many other seniors, she doesn’t always take the time to prepare herself a healthy, well-balanced meal.

“For seniors (ages 60 and up), food and nutrition affect so many things,” Linda Hazlett, RN and the Geriatric Care Manager at Generation Solutions, said. “It affects their alertness, their ability to function, their mental abilities—just their overall health. That’s why it’s so important for them to be eating the right things.”

The recipe for a healthy senior diet is one that’s full of fruits and vegetables, protein, high-fiber starches, like wheat bread and whole-grain rice, and plenty of fluids, Hazlett explained. Because seniors are often dealing with different health issues and have different needs, it is especially important to make sure they are getting all the nutrients they need, to be as healthy as possible. Most seniors have thin skin, brittle bones and are very fragile. Metabolism and digestion both slow with age and Hazlett said dehydration is often very common. To prevent this, a healthy diet starts with drinking six to eight glasses of water a day.

“They need to keep pushing the liquids and need to eat three balanced meals a day, plus snacks,” she said. “Seniors have a lot of chronic disease processes going on, and food is a huge contributor. We want to make sure seniors are doing what they can to help their health.”

She says that this includes making sure that seniors are getting enough to eat.

“As we age, we naturally lose our appetite,” Hazlett said. “Your taste buds start to decrease, your sense of smell starts to go and there is less saliva production. That’s why we often hear seniors say they just aren’t hungry.”

To keep seniors interested in food, there are numerous resources out there to help. The number one resource is family, but others, like retirement communities or home health care agencies, work to make sure the elderly are getting their daily dose of nutrition.

Generation Solutions does this through companion aides, who meet with seniors in their homes and prepare their meals.

“A lot of our aides visit seniors in the morning, serve them breakfast and lunch and prepare dinner, so folks just have to heat and eat when they get hungry later in the evening,” Hazlett said. “And we make sure the meals contain those healthy staples of protein, fruits and vegetables.”

Bentley Commons in Lynchburg has its own chef, Thomas Schmidt, on-site to help plan and prepare meals and make sure residents get a well-rounded, well-balanced diet.

“Thomas really works to accommodate residents and their likes and dislikes,” Lisa Baity, Director of Community Relations at Bentley Commons, said.

In addition, Baity says they take into consideration food allergies and health issues when planning their menus.

“We even have a food counsel here where residents can dictate what they want. And they always want a ‘junk lunch,’ as I call it, where they eat hotdogs, hamburgers, and potato chips,” she said.

But the food at Bentley Commons goes well beyond the “junk lunch” and the tempting, delicious plate of cookies in the lobby. Take one look at the menu, and you can see the wide range of food choices offered, and the variety the chef brings to all the residents’ diets. Menu items include entrées like grilled chop steak with onion pepper gravy, herb crusted cod with sautéed spinach and rice pilaf and beef lasagna.

“There’s always a main menu and an alternate menu, which is usually more of a ‘weight watchers’ option,” Baity said. “We make sure they’re getting all the food groups—even dessert because that’s what most of them always want.”

Each meal served also comes with a side of social interaction, which most experts say is just as crucial as protein is to a senior’s healthy diet.

“Food is the pinnacle of everything in a senior’s life,” Baity said. “It becomes part of the cycle for health and happiness. If they’re not happy, they don’t eat. And if they don’t eat, their health goes down.”

Sadly, this is very common problem, says Hazlett.

“There are a lot of social aspects with food. And seniors are exposed to a lot of death, as their friends and spouses die, and as they become more isolated it really affects their appetite. A lot of times, if they aren’t with someone, they aren’t eating,” she explained.

Baity says this element of social interaction over meals is one of the positive draws for Bentley Commons. And other area retirement communities like The Summit and Heritage Green agree that the group dining is a huge benefit for seniors’ overall health.

“When residents come together for lunch or dinner, it forces them to sit down and eat a good, warm meal, and it forces them to interact with others,” Baity said. “And it’s been proven that people thrive when they’re more social.”