Social aspects of meals and eating alone among older people
Photograph taken from Unsplash
The main objective of this project is, through both qualitative and quantitative methods, to increase knowledge about eating alone or with others among people aged 70 and older in Sweden.
Description
According to the World Health Organisation, healthy ageing means developing and maintaining the functional capacity that enables older people to thrive. As the world's elderly population grows, both in number and proportion, healthy ageing is becoming an increasingly hot topic. Two areas that are often discussed in relation to healthy ageing are loneliness and eating, and the two are linked through this doctoral project that studies the social aspects of meals for older people.
Eating together, also called commensality, is often considered positive for older people's nutritional status and psychosocial well-being. In contrast, eating alone is considered a risk factor for various negative health outcomes such as malnutrition and depression. However, analyses that specifically focus on lonely eating in older people are few and lack consensus.
Through qualitative interviews, this project examines how solitary and communal eating is experienced and reflected upon among 20 people between 70 and 90 years of age. Furthermore, through a quantitative questionnaire study, it investigates whether, and if so how, eating alone or eating together is related to various health-related parameters, such as self-rated health and eating habits, and whether these relationships are modified by whether and how often eating alone is perceived as troublesome.