“Start Living Life Here” proclaims a big sign at the Bluffs Landing Senior Living facility. With this exciting offer, Bluff’s Landing provides seniors an affordable and relaxing housing community in Georgetown and promises to be a great senior living facility for their retirement. As part of their senior activities, Bluff’s Landing regularly schedules many on-site series from the Capital Area Food Bank CHOICES program including Cooking for Your Life and Planning Healthy Thrifty Meals. In these classes, seniors learn about food safety, stretching their dollar and MyPlate food groups.
Retired seniors on fixed incomes, chronically ill and the disabled, all turn to the Food Bank for help in emergencies or as part of their regular meal planning. Of the various communities that the Capital Area Food Bank supports, 52,000 are seniors.
The rapidly growing senior population has a profound impact on the demand for social services, especially the need for adequate and appropriate nutrition services. There is a big gap of food insecure individuals who do not qualify for federal nutrition programs and must rely on charitable food assistance, such as food distributions by the Capital Area Food Bank and other nonprofit organizations. These seniors are at-risk, because they are usually on a fixed income and many times choose to pay for medical care over food.
Seniors have unique nutritional needs and challenges that separate them from the rest of the population.The CHOICES program understands this and the importance that nutrition plays in every stage of life. We believe in meeting clients where they’re at: whether they are children, learning to make healthy snacks or they are senior citizens living in retirement and trying to cope with health issues and a tight budget.
Here at the Food Bank, we work to meet the needs of the senior population in the 21 counties we serve by not just distributing food but also offering nutrition classes that will guide them to lead a healthier lifestyle.
Seniors are more at-risk to suffer from food insecurity and hunger than the general population. Though they might sometimes have enough money to purchase food, they do not have the resources to access or prepare meals due to lack of transportation, functional limitations and competing medical expenses.
Nutrition Educator Beatriz Bravo taught Planning Thrifty Meals at Bluff’s Landing Senior Village. She is happy to be working at the Food Bank educating those who need it the most.
“I love that in each class they learn something new and important, and it is something that can be really useful to them such as reading a nutritional facts label or learning about unit price to help them choose the healthiest and cheapest option,” she said. “I always choose recipes that are easy for them to make, since many of them live alone and many times feel discouraged to cook; my reward is the happy faces I see when I have showed them how easy and inexpensive it can be to cook a delicious and healthy recipe.”
Beatriz enjoys teaching seniors, because they show a lot of enthusiasm about the classes. She also likes the challenge of finding solutions to motivate them to follow MyPlate and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
“I feel that my job is to give them all the information that I can, so that they themselves feel empowered to choose the best decision, of course, my hope is that at the end they choose the healthiest one.”
During the classes, seniors are encouraged to help the nutrition educators make the recipes, so that they can actually prepare the meal when they get home. The seniors at Bluff’s Landing love having the nutrition educator’s classes as it is interactive and socially supportive, and they eagerly look forward to the next class schedule!
For more information or to schedule a class, please contact Angela Henry, Nutrition Education Manager, at (512) 684-2502 or email choices@austinfoodbank.org
