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Dietary Patterns in the Frail Elderly

  • Dietary Patterns and Behavior (LM Steffen, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Frail older adults have an increased vulnerability to health and environmental stressors and are at a greater risk of functional decline, disability, loss of independence and mortality. Inadequate caloric, protein and micronutrient intakes have been positively associated with an increased risk of frailty, however this traditional single nutrient approach does not account for potential interactions and synergies of nutrients within the total diet. Using dietary patterns as a means of exploring the impact of overall food consumption offers an alternative approach to investigating associations between nutrition and frailty. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing body of knowledge about the frailty syndrome in relationship with various dietary patterns in aged populations and identify areas for further research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Sue O. MacDonell, Jody C. Miller & Lisa A. Houghton

  2. Department of Medicine/School of Physiotherapy, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Debra L. Waters

Authors
  1. Sue O. MacDonell
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  2. Jody C. Miller
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Correspondence to Sue O. MacDonell.

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Sue O. MacDonell, Jody C. Miller, Debra L. Waters, and Lisa A. Houghton declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Dietary Patterns and Behavior

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MacDonell, S.O., Miller, J.C., Waters, D.L. et al. Dietary Patterns in the Frail Elderly. Curr Nutr Rep 5, 68–75 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-016-0156-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-016-0156-8

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