Japan currently has the largest ageing population inAsia, but data shows that China’s massive population, as well as its previous one-child policy, mean that it is set to take the number one spot in this regard not far into the future.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“Japan’s overall population size reached its peak in 2008, after which it was the elderly population size that grew rapidly – the same is happening in China, which saw a peak in 2021 but decrease starting in 2022, along with an increase in the elderly demographic,” Kewpie China General Manager of Health Care, Business Department Sato Kenji told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“We have already seen the impact of this elderly population on public health costs in Japan – since 2009 the public health costs have been continuously increasing despite the population size shrinking, and the top reason has been this demographic which makes up 29% of the population but 61% of the public health costs.
“This is linked back to the fact that if not properly nourished and replenished, elderly consumer health can be essentially a vicious cycle of physical weakness leading to a lack of nutrition leading to a lack of muscle which leads back to physical weakness – so nutrition is really the most important preventive factor here.
“A major learning we have seen from developing elderly-friendly foods in Japan has been that many elderly consumers have issues with nutrition as they tend to choke when eating regular foods as liquid will tend to enter the trachea instead of the oesophagus where it is supposed to go – and this can be prevented with the use of stickier ingredients.
“So Kewpie has been working on ways to help the elderly eat and enjoy foods via oral consumption and not via parenteral methods such as tube feeding, as studies have shown that physical chewing and oral ingestion has benefits to improve physiology.”
One example of the firm’s elderly friendly foods is a special rice gruel which has been made developed to be more easily swallow-able.
“Rice gruel is a very common food for elderly consumers in Japan, and has conventionally been made by grinding rice to be easier to swallow, but this of course has a lot of liquid content – we made a version that is softer than the usual, but this comes with its own challenge in that there are more sticky ingredients, and the increased stickiness means increased risk of getting stuck to the oesophagus,” he added.
“We have specifically formulated our rice gruel to be not only softer but also less sticky, so this improves swallowing but also brings down risk of both choking and sticking.”
Salad sauces for the elderly
Kewpie is best known for its salad sauces, which are considered its keystone range in China. It hopes to capitalise on their popularity moving forward.
“Chinese consumers basically only know Kewpie as a salad sauce or mayonnaise, and actually in Japan these are used a lot in elderly or rehabilitation meals,” he said.
“This is because these condiments actually contain lots of healthy fats for brain nourishment, low salt compared to items like miso, and are very easy to use in many consumption occasions.
“Importantly, a small quantity of sauce can contain very high nutritional value, so not much needs to be used, and this can also be used to replace items like eggs which elderly consumers usually don’t do that well with.
“This is something that can be applied in China as well, and should be done quickly too given the average elderly consumer age here is also going up – this was 77.4 in 2022 and expected to be 79 by 2030.
“So it is best to have preventative measures in place to ensure that Chinese consumers will be able to have a healthy and active ageing process.”
