Elderly Nutrition - Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion - US ...

alanced meals item has a lower
severity score for the elderly than for
the nonelderly, then some elderly
households with “true” food security
just below the food insecurity threshold
will, nevertheless, affirm the balanced
meals item and therefore be misclassified
as food insecure by the
standard food security classification
procedures.
The severity scores of items near the
hunger threshold (cut size of meals or
skipped meals in 3 or more months)
were almost the same for the elderlyonly
and nonelderly scales. Therefore,
estimates of the prevalence of hunger
among the elderly are not likely to
be biased and can be meaningfully
compared with those of the general
population.
Other Indications of Food
Problems Faced by the Elderly
Elderly-only households were about
half as likely as nonelderly households
to register food problems in response to
the food sufficiency question, a ratio
consistent with their relative rates of
food insecurity and hunger based on the
Food Security Scale. About 10 percent
of elderly-only households indicated
any problem (they did not always have
enough to eat or they did not always
have the kinds of food they wanted to
eat), compared with nearly 20 percent
of the nonelderly (table 2). Among
elderly-only households, 1.7 percent
reported that they sometimes or often
did not have enough to eat, compared
with 4.2 percent of nonelderly
households. On both measures, the
elderly/nonelderly differences could
reflect a general stoicism of the elderly
with regard to food needs, but the
similar pattern across the two measures
suggests, at least, that food-access
problems other than insufficient
resources to buy food do not affect
the elderly in substantially larger
proportions, compared with the
effect on the nonelderly.
Table 2. Food sufficiency status versus food security status of elderly-only and
nonelderly households, average 1999-2000
Elderly-only Nonelderly
households households
Food sufficiency status (n=13,078) (n=59,203)
Percent
Enough of the kinds of food we want to eat 89.89 80.46
Food-secure 88.76 78.09
Food-insecure without hunger 1.03 2.06
Food-insecure with hunger .10 .30
Enough to eat but not always the kinds of food we want 8.44 15.30
Food-secure 6.09 9.65
Food-insecure without hunger 1.81 4.43
Food-insecure with hunger .54 1.22
Sometimes not enough to eat 1.39 3.49
Food-secure .23 .58
Food-insecure without hunger .57 1.46
Food-insecure with hunger .58 1.45
Often not enough to eat .29 .75
Food-secure .05 .07
Food-insecure without hunger .04 .13
Food-insecure with hunger .20 .54
Note: All percentages were calculated using sample weights provided by the Census Bureau so that the
interviewed households represent the U.S. noninstitutionalized population.
Specific food problems other than
insufficient resources to buy food were
no more prevalent among elderly-only
households than among nonelderly
households (table 3). Not surprisingly,
lack of time for shopping or cooking
was much less of a problem for the
elderly-only than for the nonelderly
households. The prevalences of other
problems were remarkably similar for the
elderly and nonelderly households.
This was true even of problems such as
“too hard to get to the store” and “not
able to cook or eat because of health
problems,” which might be thought of
as being more problematic for the
elderly. These problems account for a
greater proportion of those elderly-only
house-holds that reported any problem
than was true for nonelderly households.
For example, 1.68 percent of
elderly-only households reported that
they sometimes or often did not have
enough to eat (table 2). Included among
these households were 0.66 percent
who said this was because it was too
hard to get to the store. Thus, this
problem accounted for 39 percent of
elderly-only households who sometimes
or often did not have enough to eat. The
corresponding statistic for nonelderly
households was 19 percent.
Other Indicators of Unmet Food
Needs Among Food-Secure
Elderly and Nonelderly
Households
Food-secure elderly-only households
relied less on Federal and community
food assistance programs than did
nonelderly households, with the
exception of meal programs that are
specifically intended for senior citizens
(table 4). Among food-secure households
with annual incomes below 130
42 Family Economics and Nutrition Review