Chapter 5 – Nutrition in the Elderly: General Aspects

Aging is a challenge for any living organism and human longevity is a complex phenotype. With increasing life expectancy, maintaining long-term health, functionality, and well-being during aging has become an essential goal. Healthy aging involves the interaction between genes, the environment, and lifestyle factors, particularly diet. Thus, it is important to focus attention on modifiable lifestyle factors, such as diet and nutrition, and the biomolecular and genetic mechanisms that establish their association with healthy aging and longevity. In this chapter, we report general aspects of nutrition in aging with a particular focus on the intrinsic (genes and nutrient-sensing pathways) and extrinsic (psychosocial and economic factors) causes that lead to changes in the nutritional status of the elderly with also possible corrections by a personalized diet.