Workpackage 7: Assessing seniors food-related quality of life

Workpackage led by:
Prof Klaus Grunert
Niels Asger Nielsen
(to view contact details click here)

Overall objective of Workpackage 7:
The overall objective of this WP is to determine the relationship between food, nutritional well being, health and quality of life in older people.

The detailed objectives of this WP are to:
• develop and validate questionnaire to assess food-related quality of life for use with older people
• determine the relationship between quality of life, health and nutritional well being

Participating Centres:
• Food, Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre, University of Surrey, UK
• Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca per gli Alimenti e la Nutrizione (INRAN), Italy
• Federal Research Centre for Nutrition (FRCN) (Bundesforschungsanstalt fuer Ernaehrung – BFE), Germany
• Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Faculdade de Ciências da Nutrição e Alimentação da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
• Department of Human Nutrition, University of Warmia and Mazury, Poland
• Grup d’Estudis Alimentaris, University of Barcelona, Spain

Aim
The aim of WP7 in the Food in Later Life project was to develop a reliable and valid measure of overall satisfaction with food-related life for use with older people and to identify those factors which are most strongly related to older people’s satisfaction with their food-related life, hereby helping companies, organisations, local and national authorities who operate in the area of food-provisioning in a very broad sense to tailor their products or services in such a way that they are likely to improve quality of life as measured by older people’s satisfaction with food-related life.

Methods
Initial pre-studies including 644 participants resulted in the development of a five item-scale measuring overall satisfaction with food-related life (SWFL). Both reliability and validity of the new measure was demonstrated.
The main survey included 3291 respondents above 65 years of age, approximately 400 from each of the eight participating countries. The individual samples were quota samples divided into equal proportions of women and men, young-old (65 to 74 years) and old-old (75 and above) and living with a partner or without a partner.

Principal measures included in the study were satisfaction with food-related life (SWFL) as the dependent variable and as independent variables perceived level of 22 different resources - material (e.g. income), personal (e.g. cooking skills) and social (e.g. support from family) – as well as the importance of these same resources for attaining food-related goals. Other measures included in the survey were a food variety measure and measures of physical and mental health. Principal methods of data analysis were bivariate correlation and regression analysis.

Results
The SWFL scale was shown to be valid and reliable (Cronbach’s α=81) and respondents were in general quite satisfied with their food-related lives according to this measure. On a 5 point scale where 5 is the highest possible score and 3 is neutral, the general average was 3.75. Linear regression analysis shows that the level of resources account for a good part of the variation in SWFL (R2=0.31). The resource with the highest impact on older people’s satisfaction with their food-related lives was a good appetite, indicating that maintaining the physical desire or urge for food in general is very important for older people to feel satisfied with their food-related lives. Sharing meals with others, the social aspect of eating and good health were also resources with a high impact on older people’s satisfaction with this area of their life. The analysis makes it clear that no single resource is all important for older people to be satisfied with their food life
A surprising result was that mobility was negatively related to SWFL. A likely explanation is that an adaptation effect occurs, so that when less mobility makes older people more housebound they are left with more time and perhaps money to spend on homely occupations like preparing and eating meals. More access to new products relates negatively to SWFL which is in accordance with other findings that more product choices are not always better but can lead to stress, frustration and dissatisfaction.

Even though some resources are on average more strongly related to SWFL, we found that for different (groups of) individuals, different resources are important to their SWFL. The level of a resource has a much stronger effect on the SWFL of an individual when the resource is also regarded as being important in attaining food-related goals.

The young-old between 65 and 74 years of age were marginally more satisfied with their food-related lives than those 75 and above (3.78 vs. 3.72). Men were marginally more satisfied with their food-related lives than women (3.80 vs. 3.70) whereas older people living with a partner were somewhat more satisfied than those without a partner (3.85 vs. 3.64). Respondents in Germany were most satisfied with their food-related lives (4.09) and substantially more than those in Poland (3.36) who were least satisfied among the countries surveyed.