Functional foods, which Alison described as foods that may provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition, have attracted much attention lately from industry, government, health professionals and consumers. The researchers focused their project on understanding functional foods in health and disease among older adults.

At this point, Alison reported, the research team has completed much of the data collection and the researchers are looking forward to the next steps: data and statistical analysis, results interpretation, manuscript preparation and, finally, knowledge translation. For the latter, the researchers have been working on creating a toolkit that is designed to provide guidance and materials to assist Registered Dietitians in communicating with older adults about functional foods for healthy aging.

Exploration of the consumption, awareness, understanding and motivating factors related to functional foods in older adults

•Consider and incorporate feedback from stakeholders
•Include research study results
•Connect with CFDR for consideration
•Disseminate to stakeholders in PDF format to allow for online distribution