Métodos para avaliação de hábitos alimentares em idosos

Abstract

The elderly population is the age group that has suffered the most sociodemographic changes in recent times, highlighting the increase in life expectancy and changes in the nutritional profile specific to the Brazilian population. Assessing the eating habits of the elderly becomes increasingly necessary to identify early changes in eating behavior and consumption. Given this fact, it is clear the need to survey, in the literature, the main instruments used in food surveys with the elderly. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to perform an integrative literature review about the methods for dietary evaluation in elderly used in the last 5 years. A search for Brazilian and foreign scientific articles published between 2015 and 2019 in indexing databases was performed and those that met pre-established levels of interest were selected. At the end, 47 articles were selected. The food intake assessment instruments used in studies with the elderly population were mainly the Food Frequency Questionnaire (17 studies) and the 24-hour Recall (16 studies) followed by Dietary History (5 studies) and Food Record (4 studies). Less common studies (5) were grouped into a single topic. Memory was the most cited limitation among the studies. Through the search for articles, there was a scarcity of studies that evaluated the eating habits of the elderly, and further studies on the subject were necessary.