Seminars for elderly on healthy eating

Healthy eating throughout life was the theme of a recent educational seminar for elderly people organised by B.Ed. (Hons) home economics students.

A group of six home economics fourth-year students from the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta conducted a series of health-promoting seminars for elderly people and their carers. The events aimed to demonstrate cost-effective ways to improve eating habits in line with Maltese dietary guidelines.

The students visited three day centres in Qormi, Zejtun and Mosta where 90-minute seminars were held. Over 150 people participated.

The students who carried out this project were Margaret Attard, Graziella Cortis, Marielle Gatt, Claudine Grech Spiteri, Daniela Schembri and Charlene Zammit under the guidance of Mrs Karen Mugliett and Dr Suzanne Piscopo.

To help elderly people become more nutrition literate and to guide them consuming the right foods for optimum health and for prevention of diet-related disorders, five of the students took it in turns to speak about eating less fat, eating less sugar, eating less salt, eating more fruits, vegetables and fibre-rich foods, and eating more calcium-rich foods.

Each one of the students highlighted the recommended intake, the benefits or harm of consuming a specific type of food, and how to modify the diet to conform to Maltese dietary guidelines.

At each presentation the elderly were encouraged to identify which foods were healthy and which were less so from an attractive food display set up by the students. Other resources, such as a chart of the bone structure to explain bone disease osteoporosis, and an experiment on how fat clogs arteries, added interest and facilitated understanding. A poster outlining the key messages was also used as a recall tool by a sixth student after the presentations.

An informative leaflet, a recipe booklet and a health tips calendar were also produced by the six students, so that the elderly would have take-home materials to refer to and use later on and share with carers and family members. The students also produced and displayed a selection of sweet and savoury snacks for tasting at the end of the seminar.

This educational initiative also included an evaluation component. The students carried out a survey with the elderly group to assess nutrition knowledge at baseline and immediately after the seminar. This would help determine whether at least one objective of the seminar was reached - clarification of misconceptions and enhancement of knowledge. A preliminary analysis of a sample of the data has indicated positive results.

The elderly participants won some useful gifts, including a variety of healthy food products, in a raffle drawn at the end of the seminar.

Seminar sponsors included P.J. Sutters, Paul Micallef, Jimmy Vella, Max Diner Ltd, Joe Store, Good Earth Natural Foods, J.B. Stores, and the Ministry for Urban Development and Roads, particularly Rose Curmi, Amanda Jones and Mary Muscat.

The co-operation of the day care centres' directors and staff was also crucial to the seminars' success.