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Effecting positive dietary change is one of the major health challenges facing the government and health professionals and is likely to be influenced by an understanding of the factors that shape food choice. On behalf of the Food Standards Agency, the British Nutrition Foundation recently completed an in-depth, critical review of the factors that influence food choice, attempting to identify effective mechanisms and highlight existing gaps in the evidence base. This article provides a summary of the findings and recommendations of that review.

Summary The aim of this report is to bring together, in a user‐friendly format, the progress and results of recent European Union funded projects that have investigated food and nutrients that may help to contribute towards a healthy old age. Nutrition interacts with the ageing process in a number of ways and the risk of nutrition‐related health problems increases in later life. This report provides an overview of some of the reasons why nutrition is important in old age. As an introduction, some background information on the ageing process is provided.

The findings of our study suggest that significant dietary changes, helping people to conform more closely to current dietary recommendations, occurred when people became vegetarian. In this study we did not find any significant change in body weight, but significant reductions were observed in skinfold thickness and waist : height ratio which imply that on changing to a self-selected vegetarian diet, the subjects became leaner.