Spring 2008

Nutrition in Good Taste
By Carol M. Bareuther, RD
Aging Well
Vol. 1 No. 2

“Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they are supposed to taste.”

— Charlie Trotter, star chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author

Many older adults share a common complaint: Foods no longer taste as good as they once did.

“They can’t equate this loss of taste with a symptom, problem, or specific occasion,” says Susan Moores, MS, RD, a St. Paul, MN-based nutrition consultant and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “But you can see this look of disappointment cross their faces. They’re resigned to it, this fact that food doesn’t taste as good as it did when they were younger.”

Aging and Taste
More than 2 million American adults suffer taste and smell disorders. “Taste and smell contribute to the perception of flavor,” says Marcia Levin Pelchat, PhD, a sensory psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

Flavors—sweet, sour, bitter, and salty—are all sensed through the taste buds, located primarily on the surface of the tongue, palate, and oropharynx. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the number of taste buds decreases beginning between the ages of 40 and 50 in women and 50 and 60 in men. In addition, each remaining taste bud atrophies with age.

There’s a real aromatic aspect to taste too, says Pelchat. “For example, it’s smell, not taste, that gives us the ability to differentiate between basmati and plain rice, between a mango and a peach. Just about everyone has a loss of smell by age 80,” she explains.

“Many older adults will complain that their food isn’t hot enough,” she adds. “Heat is a form of sensory stimulation. This type of stimulation can be lacking in other ways in an older adult’s life, thus putting an emphasis on food. Also, aroma molecules move more swiftly at higher temperatures, creating a greater sense of smell and thus flavor in food.”

According to the NIH, the sense of smell begins at nerve receptors high in the membranes of the nose. A diminished sense of smell is related to a loss of these nerve endings.

Surprising Aspects of Flavor
A third sense that many don’t equate with flavor is touch. “Tactile senses are what give us the ability to sense menthol and spices, the bubbles of carbonation, and the heat of a chili pepper,” Pelchat says. “Our research shows that older adults have higher, not lower, pain ratings to these items. This means, for example, that if you have a recipe and add more of all the seasonings in an effort to compensate for loss of taste, it could be the irritant flavors that will probably come through too strong and be offensive. In this case, more isn’t necessarily better.”

The sense of sight also plays a key role in flavor. “We’ve done taste studies with older adults where we blindfolded them and asked them to sample applesauce and identify it,” says Pelchat. “Although this is a very familiar food, many don’t know what it is until the blindfold comes off. Some older adults are not aware of their taste loss because when they see a food, their memory takes over and fills in the flavor description.”

It’s not just aging that affects taste, smell, touch, sight, and thus flavor. Certain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, head and neck cancers, micronutrient deficiencies, and dental problems can contribute to a loss of taste and therefore to older adults’ loss of interest in food. Other culprits include medication use (antibiotics, antidepressants, some chemotherapeutic agents, diuretics, drugs for arthritis, thyroid, and anticonvulsants), smoking tobacco, and surgery.

 Sensory deficits not only reduce the pleasure and comfort food provides but can also put older adults at risk for nutritional deficiencies. Today, clinicians and chefs alike have discovered that simple culinary techniques can not only make eating enjoyable again but also serve up a wealth of nutrients and phytonutrients that are key to wellness, disease prevention, and quality of life.

Enhancing Flavors
Professional chefs working at Classic Residence by Hyatt first studied taste loss in older adults a decade ago. The Chicago-based company, which owns and manages upscale older adult living communities across the nation, commissioned researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, to investigate exactly what happens to the palate with aging.

“We discovered two things,” says Don Clawson, assistant vice president of food and beverage at Hyatt. “First, all adults start losing their sense of taste by age 55; second, there was no logical way—no trend, nothing systematic—in how taste is lost.”

There are a few generalities in how specific tastes diminish with time. “Sweet is best preserved, while there can be an increased sensitivity to bitter with aging,” says Pelchat. “However, like the fact that some older adults require reading glasses while other’s don’t, some can hear fine and others need hearing aids, which tastes come through and which don’t can be highly individualistic.”

In clinical practice, Moores advises that “it’s important to talk to older adults and ask them specifically what they sense in a food or dish and what they don’t. This can help to design meals that are best suited to their individual perceptions and expectations.”

The chefs at Classic Residence by Hyatt have their work cut out for them in feeding and pleasing a large number of older adults each day. In addition, they’re serving a customer base that relishes comfort foods such as meatloaf and mashed potatoes, even as they prepare for the baby boomer generation for whom take-out Thai may be second nature.

To this end, the chefs at each of Hyatt’s communities across the nation have been put through a weeklong Techniques of Healthy Cooking series at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Greystone, CA. This is a customized program that teaches culinary professionals how to address the nutritional needs of their customers while keeping food flavorful. They learned and have implemented some instructive tips for clinicians who work with older adults in living communities or with those who live at home.

 • Use herbs and spices, not salt. “We try to decrease the salt, sugar, and fat in our menus but not the flavor,” says Hyatt’s Jon Benson, director of culinary operations. “We use a lot of flavor enhancers like herbs and spices.”

Spices have become the new “superfoods,” says Moores. “Spices such as turmeric, cinnamon, and ginger, for example, have all been found to contain phytonutrients with potential disease-preventing capabilities.” Several studies have pointed to curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, and its anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties.

Researchers in the United Kingdom who tested extracts of cinnamon, cloves, fennel, ginger, lavender, parsley, rose, rosemary, sage, and thyme found that simmering, soup making, and stewing significantly increase the disease-preventing antioxidant capacity of these herbs and spices, while grilling and stir-frying decrease it.

Moores says, “Today’s older adults like the idea of seasoning their foods with herbs and spices. However, these folks grew up during the Depression era and are reluctant to buy and try something they aren’t sure they’ll like and end up throwing it away. Therefore, it’s important to provide as much information as possible about how various herbs and spices taste, how they’re used, how to purchase them, and how to dry and use them in future meals.”

• Stir in seasoning veggies and fruits. Some older adults complain of heartburn when they eat onions. Yet swapping sweet for more pungent yellow onions can overcome this without sacrificing the healthful dose of sulfur-containing phytonutrients in this vegetable.

Likewise, Clawson says, “Cutting a clove of garlic and putting it in a pan with oil is one way to cook it. There’s a very sharp aroma that’s emitted this way. However, crushing the clove releases its oils and an entirely different flavor comes through.”

According to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, allowing fresh garlic to stand for 15 minutes after crushing it can boost its content of allicin, a phytonutrient that can reduce blood clots and prevent oxidative damage to the coronary vessels.

• Take taste buds on a world tour. Gone are the days when palatable food for older adults meant pablum and purées. Today, older adults are looking for more flavor in their food.
“Today’s elders aren’t as neophobic as they were 15 to 20 years ago,” says Pelchat. “They’re a lot more open to trying new foods and flavors, not just strictly the foods they grew up with.”

Benson agrees, adding, “Even with comfort foods, we’re making them in a way that is more healthful—for example, fresh rosemary and lemon on rotisserie chicken, substituting half of the ground beef for turkey in meatloaf, and cooking vegetables to the al dente stage.”

Moving older adults into the food styles of world cuisines isn’t something that happens overnight. For example, Clawson says, “Three years after our chefs took their first CIA class, they decided to take the salt and pepper off the tables and instead put out olive oil, balsamic vinegar, shredded Romano cheese, and cracked black pepper. Wow, the residents were up in arms. They wanted their salt and their butter, even though they knew these foods weren’t as healthful for them. They still wanted the familiar condiments.”

Yet as more baby boomers move into their older adult years, says Clawson, bigger, bolder, more healthful flavors such as those from Asia, Latin America, Mexico, and the Mediterranean “will become the next comfort foods.”

— Carol M. Bareuther, RD, is a St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands-based writer who contributes to a variety of regional, national, and international publications.