Many older adults are at risk of malnutrition, but older adults often reject oral nutritional supplements, which is the recommended treatment for malnutrition. The rejection of these unfamiliar foods can be ascribed to food neophobia – a reluctance to try unfamiliar foods. Food neophobia has been found to increase with older age. Food neophobia is commonly measured with the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS)(1). The scale has been validated, but it is unknown whether the FNS can adequately distinguish food neophobia from dietary restrictions. Many older adults have chronic medical conditions that require elimination of specific foods from the diet. Therefore, older adults may score higher on the FNS because they are reluctant to eat foods if it is uncertain whether the food meets their dietary requirements, while not actually being food neophobic. Younger adults with specific dietary restrictions score high on the FNS (e.g. people on a vegan/vegetarian diet, gluten free diet, or with food allergies), but to our knowledge no studies have focused on exploring this in older adults. We aimed to explore whether older adults with dietary restrictions score higher on the FNS than those without dietary restrictions, and whether poorer health status is related to FNS scores in older adults.

Health status was measured as physical- and mental health-related quality of life (QoL, SF- 12)(2), risk of sarcopenia (SARC-F)(3), and appetite (SNAQ)(4). Participants were recruited using convenience sampling, with help from local and national organizations with older adult members.

A total of 283 older adults took part in an online survey, of which 97 indicated to restrict their diet. The total sample contained 199 males and had a mean age of 74 ± 5 years old. FNS scores of older adults with dietary restrictions (31 ± 11) were not significantly higher than the FNS scores of older adults with no dietary restrictions (28 ± 9) when compared with an independent samples t-test. Regarding the relations between health status and FNS, Pearson correlations were used. We found that FNS scores were significantly correlated with poorer appetite (r = -.171, P = .004), but were not with physical or mental health-related QoL, or risk of sarcopenia. FNS scores were correlated with higher age (r = .212, P < .001), and lower education level (r = -.160, P = .007), but not with living status (alone or with others).

We conclude that the FNS scores are not different for older adults with or without dietary restrictions. The FNS scores may be higher for older adults with poorer appetite, but not for those with risk of sarcopenia or lower health related QoL. The FNS can be used to measure food neophobia in the older population despite the high prevalence of dietary restrictions.