Intergenerational Mealtime at a Shared Site: A Small-scale Trial

Summary

The goal of this study is to find out whether having children and older people who attend an intergenerational center eating lunch together on a regular basis may be an improvement over continuing to eat lunch with their generational peers in separate dining rooms at the center.

Specifically, the study analyzes the functioning and potential impact of an intergenerational dining room in terms of healthy eating, nutrition, self-evaluation of health and well-being, relational care, nutritional knowledge, and intergenerational attitudes. For this purpose, it sets up, in an intergenerational center, a dining room attended by children aged 2-3 years and older people aged 75 years and older who had previously been taking their lunch in separate dining rooms at the center.

The main questions this study aims to answer are:

* Does eating lunch at the intergenerational dining room improve the intake of healthy foods by children and older people compared to eating at their usual separate dining rooms with their peers?
* Does this type of intergenerational dining room serve as a space for nutritional education of children and older people?
* Does the experience of eating together have a positive influence in terms of children's attitudes towards older people and vice versa?

Conditions

• Healthy Nutrition
• Intergenerational Relations
• Well-being
• Relational Care
• Eating
• Mealtimes

Interventions

OTHER

Intergenerational mealtime (intervention + follow-up)

Intergenerational lunchtime at an intentional intergenerational dining room 4 days a week for 8 weeks. Once this period is over, this group will move on to a follow-up phase that will last for another 8 weeks, during which they will eat 5 days a week in different dining rooms with their generational peers, as they had been doing up to the time of the intervention. Finally, they will undergo a last follow-up period of about 2 weeks.

OTHER

Intergenerational mealtime (wait + intervention)

Waiting period consisting of 8 weeks (while Intervention Group #1 is using the intergenerational dining room). During this period toddlers and older people will eat lunch 5 days a week with their generational peers in separate dining rooms as they have been doing before the intervention. They will then move to eating together lunch 4 days a week for 8 weeks in the intergenerational dining room. Once this period is over they will enter a final follow-up phase for about 2 weeks during which they will go back to eat in generationally separate dining rooms.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Nestlé Nutrition Spain

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Macrosad

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Universidad de Granada

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Mariano Sánchez, Doc.Soc. · Universidad de Granada

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

2 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-02-18

Primary Completion

2025-07-07

Completion

2025-07-21

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations