The food intake and energy expenditure of some elderly men working in heavy and light engineering

Abstract

It is a commonplace to state that elderly people and the old are becoming an increasingly important group in the community in most countries of the world. Nutritionally, at least, it is not yet a commonplace to investigate them. Durnin, Blake, Brockway & Drury (1961) give the results of measurements on the food intake and energy expenditure of seventeen elderly women living alone in their separate households. The present paper describes, as part of a large-scale study on elderly people in Scotland, similar measurements on some elderly men working in three different types of engineering. Only the mean results of the study of energy expenditure are referred to briefly here; the details of the type of work and of the results obtained are given separately (Durnin & Blake, 1962).