Conference on Nutrition & the Chemical Senses in Aging

Murphy, Claire

Abstract

The specific aims of this conference are to: 1. Bring together, for the first time, scientists at the forefront of research on nutrition, the chemical senses, food preferences, ingestion and aging. 2. Provide a forum in which to discuss research needs and priorities in this area. 3. Stimulate and identify directions for future research, including crucial experiments, interdisciplinary studies, and longitudinal work. 4. Publish the presentations and discussion in order to stimulate further research on the interrelationships among nutrition and the chemical senses, food ingestion, and food habits in the elderly. There is a need to probe the relationships among nutrition, the chemical senses, food preferences, ingestion and age. The proposed conference will bring together experts from the fields of nutrition, the chemical senses and ingestion to discuss the state of the art in each field, to discuss what is now known in each field about the effects of aging, to seek to determine where information and research in these different fields overlap and complement each other, and to simulate new, interdisciplinary research into the problems aging poses for nutrition and the chemical senses. In recent years, with support from the National Institute on Aging, research into nutrition and aging has increased at a rapid pace. Significant research problems lie ahead: the need to specify nutritional requirements for the elderly in the face of alterations in intake, absorption and utilization; the need to develop more appropriate methods to assess nutritional status in the elderly population; the need to determine food consumption patterns in the elderly; the need to completely describe altered chemosensation in the elderly; the need to determine the effects of deficits in taste and smell on chemosensory preference; the need to determine the effects of chemosensory perceptual and preference changes to food intake patterns in the elderly; the need to characterize the relationship between altered chemosensory perception and nutrition in the elderly. An interdisciplinary approach to these problems is proposed.