This research mainly focuses on investigating the dietary behaviors and current situations of the community elders. For the purpose of providing suggestions to future nutrition plans and policies, this research will also discuss the factors associated with those dietary behaviors.
This research analyzes the data of 584 elders in the communities of Miaoli County with ages of 65 or higher collected by the project “Successful Aging of the Elder in Taiwan” sponsored by the National Science Council. Using the logic regression model as the approach to analyze among dietary behaviors and some independent variables like the fundamental economic properties of the populace society and the health conditions, to probe into the dietary behaviors and the associated factors.
The result of the research reveals that:
1.Marriage status, racial groups, religious, inhabitancy are all related to dietary behaviors of community elders.
2.Sexuality, education, racial groups all affect how community elders assimilate the six main food categories.
3.The health condition of community elders is related to dietary behavior, but is irrelevant to the assimilating of six main food categories, health food, or tonics.
4.In the logic regression analysis, racial group from the southern part of Fukien Province, those who live alone, those who are aware of not being healthy, and those who have ADLs disability are having more problems in dietary behaviors.
5.After applying logic regression analysis on the situation of assimilating six main food categories, we found that those who are male, aged, and illiterate, are prone to not assimilate all six main food categories each day. And in the assimilating of milk, those who are female, aged, and well educated, are prone to assimilate more milk.
6.After applying logic regression analysis on the situation of assimilating health food and tonics of the community elders, we found that those who are female, well educated, and the Hakka groups are prone to assimilate more health food and tonics.
This research suggests that it is doable to conduct tracing analysis on the dietary behaviors of the elders in the future, and it will help making more accurate comparison and inference to clarify the causal
relationship. This research has found that there are difference dietary behaviors between different racial groups, and also suggests that it is achievable to inspect according to sexuality, and the cultures of different racial groups to find out related issues. And it suggests when related organizations are
implementing nutrition plans, they can set up efficient nutritional education plan according to the learning requirements and properties of the elders to teach them the notion of correct dietary, and improve their nutrition status.
