Comfort eating when bored or stressed is often linked to the increasing incidence of obesity, but what about another extreme altogether where loneliness itself can lead to malnutrition?
This article makes me really think we need to be doing more to encourage community eating... and if we can make it healthy then we really would be winning.
Despite a continued reduction in absolute poverty amongst pensioners, over a million older people are likely to be malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. The main causes of this malnutrition are loneliness and isolation, often brought about by a string of setbacks such as bereavement, illness, shop closures and a loss of community transport or Meals on Wheels. Targeted investment in services which protect older people from malnutrition would deliver significant annual savings to the NHS, not least by reducing the number of hospital admissions and limiting the number of days older people spend in hospital.
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