The Effect of Music on Caloric Consumption Among Nursing Home Residents with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type

Improving meal context in nursing homes. Impact of four strategies on food intake and meal pleasure

“…However, a limited number of studies have quantified the impact of contextual improvement on food intake and/or on the nutritional status of institutionalized people (Abbott et al, 2013). Some of them focused on the effectiveness of a single change such as providing smaller portions (Cluskey & Dunton, 1999), switching from a prepared tray to a bulk service (Shatenstein & Ferland, 2000), having the staff share the meals with the residents (Charras & Frémontier, 2010), enhancing the colour contrast of the crockery that food was served on (Dunne, Neargarder, Cipolloni, & Cronin-Golomb, 2004), improving lighting (Brush, 2002) or diffusing music in the dining room (Ragneskog, Brane, Karlsson, & Kihlgren, 1996;Thomas & Smith, 2009). Six studies assessed large-scale changes which mainly aimed at shifting the dining room from an institutional appearance to more home-like setting ( Table 1).…”

Interventions for Improving Mealtime Experiences in Long-Term Care

“…Outcome measures for persons with dementia were focused on behavior change such as physical staff opinion that SLEs better for residents as they could influence food and daily activities, staff thought mealtimes resembled home-like situation and verbal agitation, aggression, physical nonaggression, and hiding or hoarding behaviors (25,(73)(74)(75)(76)(77). Other outcomes were time spent eating, food consumption, and caloric intake (23,24,77). All of the music interventions except one found a decrease in agitation and nonaggressive behaviors in the weeks that music was playing (25,(74)(75)(76)(77); thus the one study that found only an improvement during the week following the intervention was surprising (73), although another study also showed a two-week linger effect (76).…”

“…Several of these interventions involved more than one activity (e.g., décor changes and way food prepared=served) (39,49,51,58,69,70), while others consisted of only a single strategy such as changing tableware color (71,72). Musical interventions (n ¼ 8 of 17) were a large proportion of single activity environmental interventions (23)(24)(25)(73)(74)(75)(76)(77). The most common design was within-group time series=crossover (n ¼ 8) and were from the United States (n ¼ 5), Taiwan, Sweden, and Canada.…”

“…These interventions consisted of piano and= or nature sounds (73,76), relaxing slow tempo (24,25,74,76,77), classical music (74,75,77), or a combination of different styles such as music residents were familiar with (24) or preferred (23). Outcome measures for persons with dementia were focused on behavior change such as physical staff opinion that SLEs better for residents as they could influence food and daily activities, staff thought mealtimes resembled home-like situation and verbal agitation, aggression, physical nonaggression, and hiding or hoarding behaviors (25,(73)(74)(75)(76)(77).…”

“…Poor food intake is common in LTC (5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and is potentially due to a variety of multilevel factors such as resident (e.g., eating capacity), staff (e.g., dementia training), organization (e.g., policies around dining environments), and government (e.g., regulations on diet planning) attributes (7). Poor food intake can lead to malnutrition and its consequences include poor quality of life, hospitalization, morbidity, impaired healing and immunity, and death (7,10,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). Poor food intake is also a potentially preventable and reversible problem and should not be considered inevitable with aging (35); the many factors that additively and synergistically potentially play a role need to be identified and targeted for intervention.…”