| Abstract: | According to the Committee for Economic Planning and Development, it is estimated that the elderly aged 65 years and over will reach to 10.8% of the entire population of Taiwan in 2010. Inadequate in fruit and vegetable intake has been a common phenomenon for the elderly population, especially in fruit intake. To reveal the prevalence of fruit intake and its related factors, this study analyzed a national representative data from an elderly health and nutrition survey conducted by Academia Sinica Taiwan, the 1999-2000 "Taiwan Elderly Nutrition and Health Survey". The target population for the questionnaire survey were the elderly residents aged 65 and over with nationality in Taiwan (January 1, 1999 onwards). One question in the questionnaire that asked the elderly respondents their fruit intake frequencies were used as the dependent variable for this research. A number of questions considering to be related to fruit consumption were served as the independents for the analysis. The independents were classified into 3 categories based on the PRECEDE framework that introduced by Green and Kreuter. Namely, they were predisposing factors (age, sex, etc.), enabling factors (income, who prepare meals, etc.) and reinforcing factors (nutrition information, having 3 meals a day, etc.). The dependent variable was recoded dichotomously into "adequate" and "inadequate" after a series of combination and computation. The SPSS version no.12 were used for this analysis. The statistical commands Frequencies, Crosstabs, and Binary Logistic Regression and their related subcommands were performed for this analysis. The results were expressed mainly by number of samples (N), percentage (%), and odds ratios. The significance of statistical tests were set at P <.05. The main findings of this study were as follows: 78.1% of the elderly fruit intaked inadequately (men was 76.1%, female was 80.2%). Among the predisposing factors, education was the only significant predictor of the dependent. Among the enabling factors, income and home near a fruit and vegetable market were significant predictors of the dependent. Among the reinforcing factors, nutrition information and having dinner with someone were significant predictors of the dependent. Elderly with lower level of education was more likely to be fruit intake inadequate; low-income elderly was more likely to be fruit intake inadequate; an elderly resided near a fruit and vegetable market was more likely to be fruit intake inadequate; Elderly with little attention to nutrition information was more likely to be fruit intake inadequate; those who usually had dinner with their spouses were more likely to be fruit intake inadequate. It is recommendable that government and non-government organizations can work together to develop and implement more effective education programs to improve the knowledge and skills of the elderly for fruit intake. Through practical subsidy policies of the governments, the elderly with insufficient fruit intake may be able to get free or reduced price fruit services from the fruit famers and dealers. Direct delivery fruit to the needy elderly may be also recommend for the local governments and community organizations as well. |
