Nutritional Standards for the Elderly Are Urged

Since more Americans are living longer, does the standard advice about what to eat still hold true?

There is growing evidence that the decades past 60 pose their own special nutritional needs, including increased requirements for certain vitamins and minerals.

The gold standard for good nutrition--the recommended dietary allowances set by the National Research Council--advises how much protein, vitamins and minerals should be consumed by 10 different age groups up to age 50. But from 51 on, they lump everyone into one group--a concept that many find outdated.

“The idea that a 51-year-old and an 81-year-old would have the same nutritional needs is ridiculous,” said Irwin Rosenberg, director of the Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. Yet the revised RDAs issued in 1989 did not address the nutritional requirements of the elderly, Rosenberg said.

Fueling the push for better nutritional information is demography. Today there are more people 65 and older than ever before, and the huge post-World War II baby-boom generation will swell the ranks even higher in the early part of the next century, according to the National Institute on Aging. By the year 2030, 21% of Americans are estimated to be 65 or older, according to a Senate Special Committee report on aging.

The trouble is that the aging population is outdistancing the current knowledge of what senior citizens should--and shouldn’t--eat to stay healthy.

James K. Cooper, a geriatrician at the NIA, said he is frequently asked by his elderly patients if they should watch their cholesterol intake. “The answer is I don’t know,” he said.

It’s not that Cooper is unknowledgeable, but instead that the scientific evidence is unclear. Studies show that lowering blood cholesterol reduces the risk of premature heart attacks in the forty-something crowd. But the value for 75-year-olds is “not so clear, although we do believe that it can help,” said Cooper, who is also director of the nutrition section in the geriatrics program at the NIA.

What may be more important is simply following a balanced diet, with sufficient nutrients.