Tailored Nutrition Education in the Elderly Can Lead to Sustained Dietary Behaviour Change.

OBJECTIVES
Evaluate a 4-week dementia specific nutrition education intervention to determine long term knowledge and healthy dietary behaviour changes in 72 elderly men and women.

DESIGN
A mixed method design used qualitative findings to triangulate quantitative within-subject changes to determine efficacy and sustained dietary behaviour change.

SETTING
Community.

PARTICIPANTS
72 independently-living individuals.

INTERVENTION
4-week dementia specific nutrition education intervention.

MEASUREMENTS
Change in participant attitude, confidence, dietary patterns, cooking behaviour, and knowledge were analysed within-subjects using non-parametric repeated-measures procedures. Significance level was set at 5% (α = 0.05). Effect size (ES) was reported and identified as small (S), medium (M) or large (L) if a significant change was observed.

RESULTS
Compared to before the nutrition education intervention participants had an increase in total knowledge (p < 0.001, ES = 0.972 (L)), consumed a greater variety of vegetables (p = 0.007, ES = 0.35 (M)), used less salt (p = 0.006, ES = -0.42 (M-L)) and increased spice use (p < 0.001, ES = 0.40 (M-L)). Participants overcame barriers to enable sustained change, held a positive view on healthy living and believed government should invest in this sector of the community. Sharing and socialisation emerged as important themes that increased program satisfaction.

CONCLUSION
The dementia specific nutrition program produced a large effect in knowledge improvement from pre to post, which was retained at follow up, consolidated observational and participatory learning which produced a moderate increase in healthy dietary behaviours which participants valued and sustained.