Monitoring Food Intake in an Aging Population: A Survey on Technological Solutions

Abstract

The aging of the population has increased the research efforts focused on eldercare. In this area, nutrition is a topic of particular interest. A significant number of problems related with aging have their origin in a deficient nutrition. Many elders suffer changes in their nutritional patterns and these changes can cause serious deterioration of their physical condition. Therefore, to be able to address nutritional problems in the elderly, their nutritional patterns must be recorded and analyzed in an easy and efficient way. From a technological point of view, numerous works focus on monitoring the food intake, not only of elders but also of the general population. However, these works usually do not take into account the problems associated with an aging population. In this paper we present a survey of existing technological solutions for monitoring food intake. The analyzed solution are categorized based on their technological implementation and their adaptation to the needs of an aging population.