Curious Cook: Ageing and appetites

Older people often have a loss of taste and smell and poorer appetites overall. — AG Z/Pexels

Statistically, an ageing population may be regarded as a global pandemic hiding in full view. Currently, one in nine persons alive today is aged 60 or more, and by 2050 this ratio is estimated to be one in five persons. At present, two persons are having their 60th birthdays every second, making around 58 million 60th birthday celebrations annually, and this number is accelerating every year.

There are of course serious economic and social implications of such a rapidly growing population of aged people, which includes me. Long gone are the days when I could eat a dozen hard-boiled eggs at festivals, or tuck into 60 sticks of satay. But I will not expand on the socio-economic issues here; instead, this article will be about the physiological issues concerned with our diets as we grow older and how we may age a bit more healthily, if not more gracefully.