Elderly-friendly foods are products that help with chewing and digesting food while supplemented with nutritional ingredients to meet the general physical needs of the elderly.
01Eating with teeth
Elderly-friendly food that can be chewed with teeth in consideration of the physical conditions of the elderly.
02Eating with gums
Elderly-friendly food that is made to make it easy for the elderly to chew with their gums.
03Eating with tongue
Elderly-friendly food that is made to make it easy for the elderly to eat using their tongue.
Necessity of elderly-friendly food
According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, in 2011, approximately 20% of the elderly over the age of 65 were not able to swallow food or choked on food due to dysdipsia. Dysdipsia not only causes an unpleasant experience in eating, but also dehydration and, aspiration pneumonia.
(Miura, etc. 2007) According to data from Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters, in 2012, 366 patients were transferred to the emergency over five years due to respiratory obstruction, of which 76 died and 93.4% were in their sixties or more.
As eating is one of the basic means of maintaining life and high quality living, dysdipsia is a major issue that may undermine ever day or corporate life. (Miura, etc. 2007) Dysdipsia causes a decrease in vegetable and meat intake for the elderly, which leads to an unbalanced meal consisting of only carbohydrates. (Won 2003) Malnutrition increases the possibility of chronic diseases, mortality, and complications, and slows disease recovery, which is why various elderly-friendly foods should be made and developed as a method of prevention.
Welfare Union, Care Food Development
In the neighboring country Japan, feeding through nasogastric tubes can hardly be found. This is because it is well developed in the field of elderly-friendly food. Meanwhile, Korea has not seen much progress in the development in elderly-friendly food and is still using nasogastric tubes for feeding people with dysdipsia. Welfare Union Co., Ltd. was established under the mission of increasing people‘s quality of life (QOL), and has created a brand called “Hyoban (孝飯)” to provide a Korean-style balanced diet.
Hyoban strives to research and put efforts into helping senior citizens chew and swallow food without discomfort and has developed Korea‘s first safe primer food. Moreover, it has launched a series of healthy products with low sodium and frozen vegetable rice as well.
Social enterprise Welfare Union Co., Ltd. will continue to develop various elderly-friendly foods to improve the quality of life for the elderly.
