Author: Campbell Maloney

Healthy aging encompasses a lifelong love of good food and positive food experiences. Every March since 1980, the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics leads a month-long celebration, National Nutrition Month®, dedicated to the role food and nutrition play in living a healthy lifestyle.

The theme for 2022 is “Celebrate a World of Flavors.” The overall theme embraces global cultures, cuisines, and inclusivity and reinforces the message that the best diet isn’t restrictive, and that meaningful, small changes over time add up to better overall physical and emotional health and wellness.

Here are simple ways you can shift your eating habits and lifestyle and put a new spin on aging:

• Think positively about your relationship with food and your body
• Be active—physically, socially, emotionally
• Focus on your overall dietary pattern, not specific “superfoods” or trendy restrictive diets
• As author, professor, and food activist Michael Pollan says: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” as advised by a Mediterranean diet pattern
• Get cooking!
• Eat less added sugar, desserts, sodas, and juice drinks, refined grains, sodium/salt, fatty meats, and highly processed or junk food
• Eat more dried beans and legumes, whole grains, leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, and healthy oils such as olive oil
• Address age-specific nutrient concerns
• Try to eat seafood—fish or shellfish—twice a week to help get enough omega-3 fats
• Stay hydrated
• Explore new foods and flavors

Try this healthy recipe!

To help get you started on your healthy eating journey, get cooking in your kitchen with one of our favorite recipes from Around Town DC’s virtual chef Susan Barocas: Sweet and Savory Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes. This vegan dish is delicious, hearty, colorful, packs a lot of nutrition, and is sure to become a regular in your dinner rotation.

Looking for additional food and nutrition supports?

Iona’s critical food and nutrition programs include:

• Weekday community lunches at Around Town DC at St. Alban’s
• A Food Pantry Plus program to provide shelf-stable food, household essentials, toiletries, and nutritional supplements to food-insecure Iona clients
• Liquid nutrition supplements for our most vulnerable, frail clients
• Assistance with benefit programs such as SNAP (formerly food stamps)
• Enrollment in Iona’s Home Delivered Grocery Plus program, in partnership with the Capital Area Food Bank
• Enrollment in Iona’s SHARE food network monthly “grocery basket” program, in partnership with Blessed Sacrament Church and DC Department of Aging and Community Living (DACL)
• Healthy food demonstrations at the monthly St. Alban’s Farm Market and virtual cooking programs and nutrition education sessions though Around Town DC
• Referrals to DACL Home Delivered Meals
• Home delivered holiday meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas
• Personalized nutrition assessments for Iona’s highest nutrition-risk clients
• Advocacy efforts on behalf of reducing senior hunger and malnutrition in DC

Learn more about Iona’s Nutrition team and their credentials

• In 2008, the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics designated the second Wednesday in March as Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) Day to commemorate the dedication of RDNs as food and nutrition experts and advocates, and to increase awareness among the public and the media that RDNs are trusted sources of science-based food and nutrition information. This years’ RDN day is March 9, 2022.
• Registered Dietitian Nutritionists are licensed health professionals with specific science-based dietetic/nutrition degrees from accredited colleges and universities. They have a Master’s degree and complete highly-competitive 1000-hour post-graduate internships with supervised practice and pass a national exam.
• There are several academic pathways to becoming a Licensed Nutritionist (LN). Iona’s LN, Chris Brentin, has a Master’s Degree in Human Nutrition, 1000 hours of supervised clinical practice, and passed the national exam to become a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS).
• Dietitians and Nutritionists use their training and expertise to help individuals and groups make meaningful, personalized, and positive lifestyle changes to maximize their food and nutrition situation.
• Dietitians and Nutritionists work in varied environments such as public relations/communications, the food industry, health care, universities, research, public health, community settings, government, or private practice. They must be licensed to practice in the state where they work and maintain approved continuing education.

Now, it’s time to put your best fork forward and commit to making these small changes for a healthier future.

By Rose Clifford, RDN, MBA & Chris Brentin, CNS, MS

Rose Clifford, RDN, MBA has practiced as a registered dietitian nutritionist in the Washington, DC area for over 30 years. Her current primary work as the Senior Nutrition Program Manager for Iona Senior Services focuses on helping older adults maximize their nutritional health so they can live active, full lives in their own homes.

Chris Brentin, MS, LDN, CNS is a licensed nutritionist in Maryland and DC and a Certified Nutrition Specialist. She has spent the past 6 years working with older adults in DC improve their health through nutrition and increased access to healthy food. Chris is the Nutrition Program Manager at Iona Senior Services and manages the Food Security Program.

I’m often asked what I do in my role as Iona’s licensed dietitian nutritionist.  Many think I spend my days telling people to eat this, but not that.  “Not quite,” I say.  Although I am Iona’s Nutrition Program Manager, I primarily work as a senior hunger advocate – a warrior in the tireless fight against senior food insecurity and malnutrition.

While no one should go hungry or lack access to sufficient healthy food, all older adults are particularly vulnerable to the effects of food insecurity, especially now during this public health crisis. Pre Covid-19, the District had the highest food insecurity rate among seniors in the country (14.3%).  This rate has risen steadily in recent years, from 9.6% in 2016 and 11.1% in 2018.  DC is ranked #1 in terms of the worst in the United States for the threat of senior hunger.  Imagine that.

On March 16, 2020, all the Community Dining sites for seniors city-wide shut down and all in-person social, fitness, and wellness activities were suspended through the end of September 2021.  Many seniors are still afraid or unable to go out and shop or have their usual home health aides come into their homes to assist them with shopping, cooking, cleaning, or personal care.  This and other Covid-19 related factors have made it even harder for older adults to feed, nourish, or care for themselves adequately.

I know what you’re thinking: “But, what about Ward 3? There can’t possibly be hungry, isolated seniors in our tidy, mostly well-off Ward 3 neighborhoods?!?!” My response? This is a problem that affects all of DC. In fact, my team and I spend our days tirelessly fighting on the front lines of senior hunger right here in Ward 3.  Covid-19 has increased the number of seniors needing food and nutrition assistance from Iona by over 250%.   City-wide, there are about 6,600 seniors receiving home delivered meals with over 1.2 million meals served since mid-March.

Iona currently serves 399 home delivered meals clients, up from an average of 175 pre-Covid.  Our little pre-Covid food pantry “closet” has expanded into a “mini-mart” of shelf-stable food, cleaning, and hygiene supplies that fills our former fitness studio at Iona.  Under the able daily coordination by Tania Sechriest, our new Food Pantry Plus program has made 652 total deliveries to 227 clients across all 8 wards, including delivery of 510 cases of nutrition supplements.

Who is a typical nutrition client served by Iona? Take for example, a current longtime client who is an 81-year-old male.  He was initially referred to me because he experienced an unintentional 63-pound weight loss over 6 months.  He looked haggard, weak, and underweight.  He’d had all kinds of sophisticated, invasive, and costly medical tests and procedures to rule out everything from an undiagnosed malignancy to gastrointestinal disease.  All of the testing was inconclusive and provided no cause for his unintentional weight loss.  Imagine his anxiety level and distress, just trying to survive each day in this weakened state.  I wish this was an unusual situation or referral, but in Iona’s work, it’s common.

Did anyone think to investigate his nutritional situation or ask this man if he had enough food to eat before thousands of dollars were spent on medical tests?  Such a simple, basic human need and right – to have sufficient good-quality food to eat in order to maintain health and a good quality of functioning and life.  Yet, here is an older adult who recently had only $7.00 left of his monthly income to last him the 10 days before he would get another social security check deposit in his bank account.  In fact, he was so low on funds that he literally did not have enough money to buy food after the middle of the month.

Senior malnutrition is often a “hidden secret” with devastating individual suffering and societal consequences.  The estimated annual cost of disease-associated malnutrition in older adults in the US is $51.3 Billion.  Food and nutrition issues are so important to good health and life quality for older adults, but are often poorly understood or go unrecognized.

But, back to my client. Today, he has a steady weight, a better sense of well-being, a community of friends, and a good level of energy and functioning.  How did Iona step up to the plate to help him?  First, he was enrolled in our home delivered meals program, and receives 10 fresh Mom’s Meals delivered every two weeks.  He also participates in our Covid-19 Emergency Meals Program, receiving 7 frozen meals weekly, a program well-liked by most of our clients.  He receives several cases of a high calorie/high protein Boost Glucose Control liquid nutrition supplements and deliveries of additional shelf stable food and supplies through the Food Pantry Plus program monthly, delivered by Iona volunteers.  He is also enrolled in and receives a monthly SHARE Food Network grocery package, also delivered by Iona volunteers.  His amazing Iona social worker helps him maintain his SNAP (food stamp) and other benefit enrollments and got him new dentures so he can eat better.

It is important to understand that senior hunger and malnutrition is not limited to low income seniors but is a complex phenomenon that cuts across all income spectrums and is often an access issue.  Factors such as poor appetite, unintentional weight loss and frailty, isolation, decreased mobility, cognitive decline, psychosocial and mental health issues, nutrient deficiencies, poor oral health, and lack of transportation are common contributing factors to senior food insecurity and malnutrition.  For these and other reasons, older adults or their caregivers are often unable to plan, procure, and prepare adequate, fresh, and nutritionally-balanced meals.  The public health emergency caused by Covid-19 has only exacerbated this situation.

Putting an end to senior hunger and food insecurity in Washington, DC requires a coordinated effort by multiple stakeholders – please help us in our tireless efforts to set the table for our seniors.

Rose Clifford, RDN, MBA