Background. Social facilitation and meal ambiance have beneficial effects on food intake in healthy adults. Extrapolation to the nursing home setting may lead to less malnutrition among the residents. Therefore, we investigate the effect of family-style meals on energy intake and the risk of malnutrition in Dutch nursing home residents.

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This paper deals with the question of whether dietary assessment methods developed and validated for younger adults can be used in surveys for elderly people. From the literature it is clear that a decline in short-term memory with age makes the 24-h recall method particularly unreliable. Better results have been obtained with other methods, especially when a combination of methods is used and equipment is adapted for use by older people. However, validity of these methods when applied in older people is dependent on the group of elderly people under study and the type of information required for the purpose of the study. As an example, the validity of the adapted dietary-history method used in the Survey in Europe on Nutrition and the Elderly a Concerted Action (SENECA) is discussed. This method showed good agreement with the weighed record and with other evaluation criteria.

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This study suggests beneficial effects of this new type of day care on dietary intake by community-dwelling older people with dementia.

Objective: (1) To determine whether nutritional supplementation (energy and micronutrients) in institutionalised elderly has a positive effect on dietary intake and nutritional status. (2) To investigate whether individuals tend to compensate for the energy content of the intervention product by decreasing their habitual food consumption. Methods: A 24-week, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, intervention trial in homes for the elderly (n ¼ 3), in nursing homes (n ¼ 3) and 'mixed' homes (n ¼ 3) in The Netherlands. Institutionalised elderly people (n ¼ 176) older than 60 years of age, with a body mass index p30 kg/m 2 and a Mini-Mental State Examination score of 10 points or higher, randomly received a nutrient-enriched drink or a placebo drink twice a day during 24 weeks in addition to their usual diet. Allocation to treatment took into account of sex, the Mini-Mental State Examination score and the plasma homocysteine level. Body weight and several nutrition-related analyses in fasting blood samples were measured in all participants. Data on dietary intake were collected in a subsample (n ¼ 66). Results: A significantly favourable effect (Po0.001) of the intervention drink was observed on vitamin intake, mineral intake and vitamin status in blood (for example, homocysteine decreased from 14.7 to 9.5 mmol/l in the intervention group as compared with that in the placebo group (17.2-15.9)). The difference in change in total energy intake between the two treatment groups was 0.8 MJ/day (P ¼ 0.166). Energy intake from food decreased in both groups to the same extent (À0.5 MJ/day). Therefore, this decrease cannot be considered as compensation for the energy content of the product. Conclusions: This group of institutionalised elderly people does not compensate for the energy content of a concentrated nutritional supplement. Therefore, this supplement is effective for counteracting the development of malnutrition in this population.

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The aim of this study was to develop and validate a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire to classify individuals according to their intakes of retinol and beta-carotene. Food items for the questionnaire were selected both on the basis of their contribution to total population intake of retinol and beta-carotene and on the proportion of between-person variation explained, which was as calculated from data of two study populations in the Netherlands. Thus, 15 products containing retinol and 15 products containing beta-carotene were selected. These contributed over 90% to the total intake and explained 99% of the variation of retinol and beta-carotene, respectively. The questionnaire was validated against a dietary history in a population of 82 women (aged 30-49 years). The time elapsed between the two interviews was (on average) 25 days. Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients comparing the questionnaire with the dietary history were 0.54, 0.59, and 0.64 for retinol, beta-carotene, and total vitamin A, respectively. The proportion of exact agreement in the two extreme categories of vitamin A intake, based on quintiles, was 56%. The corresponding gross misclassification (from 1 extreme category into the opposite) was 3%. These data indicate that a very short questionnaire can classify subjects into categories according to their vitamin A intake.