A study published in JAMA Network Open has stated that over the past 2 decades, the diet quality for older Americans has undergone a steep fall.

The study was done to evaluate the overall dietary quality and key food components and nutrients among older US adults. It used 24-hour dietary recall data from 10 837 adults aged 65 years or older in 9 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles (2001-2002 to 2017-2018).The mean Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015 score (total = 100 points) decreased from 47.82 to 45.25.

The study showed deterioration in the overall dietary quality from 2001 to 2018 among older adults. The mean primary American Heart Association (AHA) score decreased from 19.84 to 18.28, while the secondary AHA score decreased from 34.75 to 31.83.The observations from the primary AHA score further inferred that there was a significant increase from 50.9% to 60.9% in the proportion of American older adults with a poor diet quality. Also, a significant decrease from 48.6% to 38.7% was seen in the proportion of people with intermediate diet quality.The proportion with ideal diet quality was consistently low (0.4% in 2001-2002 as well as 2017-2018). 

The dietary quality decreased for most of the components among older US adults between 2001 and 2018 with more than half of the older Americans still having a poor dietary quality.(MedPage Today - JAMA Network Open, March 11, 2022)