• The importance of nutrition education in old age and related disease prevention
  • zeinab sadat moosavi fard,1,*
    1. Department of Nursing, faculty of nursing, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran.


  • Introduction: In recent years, the role of nutrition in controlling risk factors and preventing nutritional deficiencies that occur in old age has received more attention. According to the definitions provided, it refers to people aged 65 and over. Today, there are 600 million seniors over the age of 60 worldwide. And it is predicted to reach two billion people in 2025. According to the last census of 1390 in the country, there are 6159676 elderly people in the country, which constitute 1.8% of the total population. Healthy eating as an essential element of health in this age group needs special attention and improving nutrition can greatly prevent these problems, so one of the important issues in this regard is to increase the awareness and attitude of the elderly. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to evaluate the effect of nutrition education in the elderly.
  • Methods: Searching databases of Pubmed, Science direct, Google scholar, Side, Iranmedex, Scopus and using the keyword nutrition, the elderly, prevention, articles published in Persian and English were collected until August 2015. The obtained articles were reviewed based on the title, abstract of the article and their full text and all the indicators were examined. A total of 45 articles related to the purpose of this study remained for systematic review.
  • Results: Aging is thought to lead to increased oxidative stress and imbalance between the formation and destruction of free radicals, and thus can affect the composition of blood lipids, and inactivity is a feature of old age. As a result of all these factors, it causes chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Therefore, proper nutrition is the main condition for the survival of the elderly. Nutrition education is very important in this regard.
  • Conclusion: Decreased physical fitness of the elderly due to old age limits the possibility of access to all the nutrients needed by the elderly, while isolation and loneliness cause mental problems and reduce appetite and motivation to eat. Therefore, measures should be taken to support the improvement of nutritional status and their loneliness. Due to the worrying malnutrition of the elderly, nurses can play an important role in nutrition-based education.
  • Keywords: nutrition, education, old age, disease prevention