Functional foods to keep ageing population healthy

A potentially huge market exists for functional foods to keep Europe’s ageing population healthy in years to come. Eurostat predicts the proportion of the population aged 65 and older will increase from 17% to 30% by 2050.

The European Commission has funded the NU-AGE project, which conducts studies with the aim of creating functional foods for healthier diets for Europe’s ageing population. Today, NU-AGE will hold a symposium at the International Union of Nutritional Science’s (IUNS’s) 20th International Congress of Nutrition (ICN). The symposium will explore the topic of ‘New dietary strategies about healthy nutrition for the elderly’.

Xavier Irz, Professor of Economic Analysis of Food Markets at MTT Economic Research in Finland, will present a paper entitled ‘Socio-economic determinants of diet quality and health of the EU elderly’. Irz says understanding of how food choices, diet quality and health influence dietary change and healthy ageing in elderly people is poorly understood.

Research into elderly people in four European countries shows that, on average, diet quality is low. Socioeconomic factors, such as education, are key, Irz says, as well as regional differences. When analysing the benefits of health promotion strategies for the elderly, results show a focus needs to be given to the mechanisms connecting diet quality and health.

Lisette de Groot, professor in nutrition and ageing at Wageningen University, Netherlands, will present the first study into effects of a whole diet on health and quality of life in people aged 65 to 80: ‘A randomised trial on the effect of a full dietary intervention on ageing in European elderly people: The NU-AGE study’.

This one-year trial involves 1250 volunteers in five EU countries, split into a group that receives dietary advice and a control group that receives no dietary advice. It will be completed in in late 2014. The results, which include targeted nutritional recommendations, will feed into scientific evidence on the effect of a whole foods diet on preventing age-related decline.

Finally, ‘Diet-Microbiota-Health interactions in Older Persons’ will be presented by Paul O’Toole, Professor in Microbial Genomics, from University College Cork, Ireland. This is the largest study so far that has looked at elderly people’s gut microbiome - the bacterial ecosystem in the intestines - and its dependency on diet, and links to health, ageing and wellbeing.

More information on the NU-AGE project is available here.