According to a survey done by Home Instead, a senior in-home care service in Santa Barbara, seniors who eat most of their meals alone are more than twice as likely to feel lonely compared to those who enjoy meals with others.
Home Instead Senior Care assists seniors who are living independently at home by helping them with daily living activities like meal preparation, housekeeping and making it to appointments. The organization also helps manage end-of-life care.
Tiffany Alcantara is the owner of Home Instead. She said her staff interact with seniors experiencing isolation and loneliness everyday.
So, the organization is launching the Companionship Diet. Alcantara said it’s a program that offers free resources like recipes and tips for involving older people in the meal preparation process.
“A lot of our younger generation will hesitate to act because they don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to engage that person in conversation,” Alcantara said. “So we just kind of set out the map of what they can do, what they can cook, what they can talk about.”
Alcantara said she has seen isolation and loneliness exacerbated by the loss that comes with the natural aging process that seniors go through. She said losing the ability to drive or suffering a physical ailment can make community engagement challenging.
Alcantara said the pandemic has only made things worse and these feelings cause seniors to skip more than 20 percent of their meals each year. She said this can lead to a lack of nutrition and a reduction in medication use.
Alcantara said she’s seen how social interaction at meal time can change that.
“I’ve seen greater medication compliance. I’ve seen better nutrition long term,” Alcantara said. “Really it’s their outlooks and their willingness to be engaged in life [that is] something I've seen first hand more times than I could count.”
Alcantara said she hopes the Companionship Diet will help assist further in making this a reality for seniors.
“When we’re having our meals, that is something that they don’t have to lose,” Alcantara said. “There are a lot of things they are going to lose that we can’t control, but if people use this information and use it to connect to the older people in our community, I think we could really do something beautiful.”
Click here to learn more about the Companionship Diet. Click here to get access to other resources that Alcantara said can be used to help the senior community.
