Canadians over 45 who stayed socially isolated were more likely to stop eating fruit every day, and income changed who was hit hardest

Eating fruit and vegetables every day is one of the simplest markers of a good diet in later life, yet more than half of older Canadians do not reach the recommended five or more times a day. Earlier studies have linked social isolation with poorer diets, but they mostly gave an average answer for everyone. A team at the University of British Columbia, with colleagues at the University of Waterloo and BC Cancer, asked a sharper question: when people's social lives change in mid and later life, whose diet suffers, and does that depend on income, education and gender?

Their study, published on 18 October in the journal Nutrients, used three rounds of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging: 2011 to 2015, 2015 to 2018 and 2018 to 2021. It included 11,900 adults aged 45 and over (average age 62, about 61% women) who all reported eating fruit or vegetables at least once a day at the start. Social life was measured by how many of eight types of social activity each person took part in at least once a month. One activity or none counted as socially isolated; five or more counted as diverse social participation. The researchers tracked how these changed between the first and second rounds, then checked who had lost daily fruit or daily vegetable intake by the third round, on average about 70 months after the start.

Staying socially isolated was linked with losing daily fruit intake in several groups. The odds were about 1.9 times higher in women with lower incomes and 1.8 times higher in men with lower incomes, compared with people of the same gender and income group who stayed socially connected. Among women with higher incomes the odds were 7.6 times higher, but that figure rests on just 21 women, 10 of whom stopped eating fruit daily, so it is very uncertain. Keeping a narrow social life (fewer than five regular activities) was linked with losing daily fruit in women and men in both income groups, with odds 1.4 to 1.7 times higher. For vegetables, the clearest link was in higher-income women who kept a narrow social life, with 43% higher odds of losing daily vegetable intake.

The authors had expected people with less money to be the most vulnerable, and that was only partly true. Income changed the picture mainly for women's fruit intake, and several links were stronger among better-off women. Some results ran the other way: women with higher incomes who became more socially active, or stopped being isolated, were also more likely to drop daily fruit. Diet was recorded with a short questionnaire about how often people ate foods, not how much, and social activities were self-reported. Events such as bereavement, a house move or failing health were not measured and may lie behind both changes. The participants were 96% white, and those analysed were better educated and better off than those left out for missing data. An observational study like this shows links, not cause and effect, but the authors suggest that efforts to keep older adults eating well may need to look at social life alongside money.