Undernutrition is highly prevalent in older adults and poses a major threat to physical and mental wellbeing. To foster healthy eating (and healthy aging), strategies are needed to improve dietary quality of older adults. In this study, the feasibility of increasing food variety in home-cooked meals is explored as strategy to promote meat and vegetable consumption in community dwelling older adults. Adults aged 50 years or older (N = 253) evaluated pictures of traditional Dutch dinner meals with more or less variety in the vegetable or meat component in an online questionnaire. Specifically, four different variety ‘levels’ were presented: (1) no variety, (2) meat variety, (3) vegetable variety, and (4) variety in both meat and vegetables (mixed). Participants indicated for each meal picture how much they would like the meal, whether it represented an ideal portion size, and whether they would be able and willing to prepare the meal. We expected that with increasing variety, liking and ideal portion size would increase, while ability and willingness to prepare the meals would decrease. Results showed that the meals with meat variety and mixed variety were liked less than meals with vegetable variety or no variety. Participants were all highly willing to prepare the meals, but they were less willing to prepare the meals with meat variety and mixed variety compared to the meals with vegetable variety and no variety. All meals were evaluated as being too large, but the meals with vegetable variety and mixed variety were evaluated as more oversized than the meals without variety and with meat variety. These results suggest that encouraging older adults to include variety in home-cooked meals might be more challenging than anticipated.

中文翻译：

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探索膳食多样性以提高老年人自制膳食的吸引力

营养不良在老年人中非常普遍，对身心健康构成重大威胁。为了促进健康饮食（和健康老龄化），需要采取策略来改善老年人的饮食质量。在这项研究中，探讨了增加家庭烹饪食物种类作为促进社区居住老年人肉类和蔬菜消费的策略的可行性。 50 岁或以上的成年人 (N = 253) 在在线调查问卷中评估了传统荷兰晚餐的图片，其中蔬菜或肉类成分或多或少有所不同。具体来说，提出了四种不同的品种“水平”：（1）无品种，（2）肉类品种，（3）蔬菜品种，以及（4）肉类和蔬菜品种（混合）。参与者在每张餐食图片中表明他们对这顿饭菜的喜爱程度、它是否代表了理想的份量以及他们是否能够并且愿意准备这顿饭菜。我们预计，随着品种的增加，喜好和理想的份量会增加，而准备饭菜的能力和意愿会下降。结果显示，肉类品种和混合品种的膳食比蔬菜品种或无品种的膳食更受欢迎。参与者都非常愿意准备膳食，但与蔬菜品种和无品种膳食相比，他们不太愿意准备肉类品种和混合品种的膳食。所有膳食均被评价为过大，但蔬菜品种和混合品种的膳食被评价为比无品种和肉类品种的膳食过大。这些结果表明，鼓励老年人在家做饭时加入多样化可能比预期更具挑战性。