In this piece of writing I am going to assess how influences on dietary intake may affect the nutritional health of individuals and then I am going to make realistic recommendations for minimising negative influences on individuals in a specific health and social care setting.
Elizabeth is an elderly lady who is suffering from arthritis this means that she isn’t able to carry things with her hands because her bones are weak and also she also struggles to do many different things on a daily basis so she has domiciliary care.
Elizabeth is living alone in a block of flats and when the carers come to her flat they only come twice a day and each time this is only for 15 minutes because they are only there for short amount of time they wouldn’t be able to prepare a good meal for her to eat they would most likely be preparing her microwave meals because they are faster to make and they also have time to ensure that she eat the food.
This will have an impact on Elizabeth’s nutritional health because if she is only getting microwave meals these are high in fat and sugar so this will mean that because she can’t cook food for herself she won’t be getting a variety of different foods and also a variety of different nutrition’s. this could mean that Elizabeth’s condition could become worse because she is already suffering with weak bones so if she isn’t having a good intake of calcium this could then make her condition deterate because of the low amount of calcium that she is in taking. This could also cause Elizabeth to either loose or put on weight this is because these meals are high in fat she could begin to put lots of weight on but also because she could begin to lose weight because she could start to suffer from under nutrition.
This could have an influence on Elizabeth’s dietary habits because this would mean that her meal patterns would have to change because she