Food and Nutrition Issues of Aged Care in Australia
What are the realities of food and nutrition of aged care in Australia?
Food and nutrition are one of the biggest factors in any health facilities, which definitely includes aged care centres. However, not all residential home facilities can provide decent nutrition to their residents. In fact, experts have uncovered that some facilities in the Australian aged care business serve low-quality and insufficient food to its residents.
Food and Nutrition Issues
There are a few factors that constitute a great meal. It should be sufficient, should be nutritious, and should taste and looks good. Unfortunately, many facilities that offer aged care in Australia do not provide that type of meal.
According to an ABC investigation, low quality and insufficient food servings are rampant throughout the Australian aged care sector. In fact, they found that many residential home facilities only allocate the $6-worth of daily food of each resident, which is undeniably small compared to the average of $17 daily food expenses of seniors outside facilities.
This results in insufficient and unpresentable food with an extremely low nutritional value, and an undesirable taste. Some facilities even serve exactly the same menu for few months in a row.
Thus, seniors in aged care centres often responses negatively when asked about their meals. Some team members also voiced out their concern to the sector, highlighting the presence of “awful” food for the residents in their workplace.
Upon investigation, it was observed that such an issue has various causes. However, lack of funds is one of the most common factors, which pushes centres to limit their budget to accommodate their residents.
Unfortunately, one report also found that the good meals were instead served to managers and superiors. Needless to say, the residents were getting the short end of the stick.
Serving Food Right
Fortunately, authorities are starting to implement strict standards after uncovering such problem. Moreover, there are aged care facilities that still observe proper food and nutrition for residents.