Ikäruoka 2.0

Multiform food related services to promote older people's sense of community and functional capacity – the Ikäruoka 2.0 project

Finland’s population is ageing rapidly and innovative actions are needed to improve the wellbeing and functional capacity of older people living at home. Promoting healthy and social eating is one important development target, as it helps improve older people’s health and quality of life. In addition, services supporting healthy and social eating make it possible for older people to live at home for as long as possible, which they also often prefer. Promoting living at home also slows down the increase of future social and health care costs.

Goals

The project aims:

to support older adults’ healthy eating, ability to function and sense of community.
to develop multiform food related services for older adults living at home.
to promote multisectoral regional collaboration to develop local food related services.

This project’s key concept multiform food related services refers to a wide range of services which enable health-promoting food choices for older adults living at home.

The multiform food related services include:

food services
grocery stores
food delivery services
online food ordering applications
transportation – access to food services
assisting, advisory and counselling services.

In optimal cases, all these services are designed by user-centred approach also from older adults’ perspective so that their own residential area would provide services that are of high quality, attractive, acceptable and affordable.

Target group

This project aims to develop food related services especially for older adults living at home. They are people over the age of 65 in good condition or people with some illnesses and fragility, but without regular need for help in their everyday life.

In addition, special attention is paid to the service needs of older adults in particular risk of having eating habits that do not promote wellbeing and ability to function, such as

newly retired
newly widowed
people living alone
people with impaired cognition or functional capacity.

The Ikäruoka 2.0 project aims to promote older adults’ healthy and social eating in different residential districts – urban areas, countryside – by developing services and service models in regional multisectoral collaboration.

Photo: Xamk

More information

Riitta Tuikkanen, Project Manager, Xamk
Tel. +358 40 772 3385, riitta.tuikkanen@xamk.fi

NEWS

New Finnish food recommendation for older adults
Last year, in 2020, Finland received a new food recommendation for older adults. The recommendation is an important background document for our project. The first part of the recommendation defines how to support the healthy eating habits of older adults living at home.
The recommendation has also been published in English, and the ebook is available on the website: Vitality in later years: food recommendation for older adults. 2020. National Nutrition Council and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).

Vitality in later years: food recommendation for older adults. 2020.

Understanding older adults through functional capacity

Finnish legislation defines older adults as people over the age of 65 years. When discussing nutrition, it is more appropriate to understand older adults according to their state of health and functional capacity rather than their age.

Finnish food recommendation groups older adults according to functional capacity under four categories (Figure 1). The Ikäruoka 2.0 project aims to develop food related services for the older adults belonging to the two lowermost groups of Figure 1. They are people in good condition or people with some illnesses and fragility, but without regular need for help in their everyday life.

However, the needs of older adults vary in terms of services that support living at home. The goal of Ikäruoka 2.0 is to maintain functional capacity and enable living at home as long as possible by developing services for older adults. Eating together at a local restaurant increases the pleasure of eating, encourages people to test new foods, helps those with poor appetite to eat more, and promotes older adults’ sense of community. Help with shopping or food product delivery services increase the possibilities to live at home. Cooking and baking by themselves can be activating and bring meaningfulness to everyday life and provide a rhythm for the day.

Figure 1: Grouping older adults according to functional capacity (Vitality in later years: food recommendation for older adults 2020)

Pilot areas

In Finland, most people live in the southern part of the country. There is a wide variety of services, and the distances from home to local restaurants and grocery stores are short. However, the distances in the central and northern regions of Finland are long, and a lot of people live far from services.

Our project assumes that older adults living in urban areas have different needs for services than those living in the countryside. That is why we have three pilot areas which are different kinds of residential areas. Järvenpää is an urban area in Southern Finland, and in Jyväskylä, we have the city centre as the pilot area. The pilot areas of South Savo involve Juva and Mäntyharju which represent the countryside. Table 1 gives further information on the pilot areas.

Table 1. Area and population of pilot areas

Pilot area	Population*	Area (km2)	Population density (/km2)
Järvenpää	43 711	40	1 093
Jyväskylä city centre	4 738	?	?
Juva	6 121	1 346	4.5
Mäntyharju	6 000	1 210	6.2

* 2019

The pilot areas of South Savo are sparsely populated.

Local food environment of older adults

Our project assumes that older adults living in urban areas have different needs for services than those living in the countryside. The project further assumes that an understanding of the local food environment helps us to develop better regional services for older adults. For this reason, the local food environment was studied in each pilot area.

First, basic information about the regional food related services was collected in each pilot area: How many restaurants and grocery stores are in the area and where are the services situated? Next, the project made observations of these services from older adults’ point of view. The focus was on availability and accessibility. Furthermore, older adults living in the area were interviewed on the phone.

These three project steps showed that the food related services of the rural municipalities were located in the municipal centres, a long way from smaller villages, and the local transportation to access the services was poor. In addition, the observations of pilot areas showed that there already were good food service related practices (Pictures 1-3), but also challenges and development targets.

Picture 1: Special shopping trolley for older adults