Montreal Gazette - When appetite fails, certain foods can succeed; Gentle meals and protein help in times of illness

All kinds of factors affect our appetite, from illness, medication and nausea to solitude - and even normal aging. We need to eat to keep our strength up. We know that. But when you don't feel like eating, knowing that you should and actually bringing yourself to eat can be two different things…

Observed Katherine Gray-Donald, an associate professor in the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition at McGill University: "Certainly, we worry about older people. People get things like flu and lose their appetite, lose a little bit of strength, and might not pick up as well as younger people. If they don't get out for a while, they can get worried about going out, about slipping on the ice - and it becomes a vicious circle."

Gray-Donald was part of a research study at McGill and at the University of Sherbrooke, with Hélène Payette of Sherbrooke as principal investigator, that followed nearly 1,800 healthy Quebecers between the ages of 68 and 82 for four years. In comparing people who had lost more than five per cent of their body weight with the rest, investigators found that the group that lost more weight had eaten less protein.