The Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Dong-Eui Institute of Technology (President Kim Young-do) signed a business agreement on the 2nd with Busanjin-gu, Busan, Hapcheon-gun, Gyeongnam, Pulmuone Foodmorse, Busanjin Senior Welfare Center, Hapcheon Senior Integrated Support Center, and the Center for Comprehensive Support for the Elderly Living Alone to effectively carry out the demonstration project of senior-friendly excellent foods for homebound elderly, led by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Food Industry Cluster Promotion Agency.
From the left, Ewha-seok Lee, Director of Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation at Dong-Eui Institute of Technology; Hyun-mi Kim, Director of the Comprehensive Support Center for Elderly Living Alone; Jung-min Han, Director of Busanjin-gu Senior Welfare Center; Young-hee Jeon, Director of Welfare Education Bureau of Busanjin-gu; Hae-sik Kim, Director of Administrative Welfare Bureau of Hapcheon-gun, Gyeongnam Province; Hee-mok Lee, Director of Hapcheon Senior Integrated Support Center; Hyun-ki Moon, Executive Director of Pulmuone Foodmers.
Senior-friendly excellent foods are products manufactured and processed by adjusting physical properties, forms, and ingredients to assist elderly people with intake, nutritional supplementation, digestion, and absorption, enhancing usability for the elderly.
Additionally, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs operates a designation system for senior-friendly excellent foods, having designated 176 products from 34 companies by the end of 2023.
The 2024 senior-friendly excellent foods demonstration project aims to devise measures to expand the consumption of senior-friendly excellent foods by providing homebound elderly living alone in urban and rural areas with a 12-week supply of food packages consisting of a 4-week cycle of senior-friendly excellent foods and candidate foods with similar physical properties, followed by observation of health improvement effects.
Professor Han Jin-sook of the Department of Food Service Industry at Dong-Eui Institute of Technology, the principal investigator, said, “Based on expertise and field experience related to elderly meal management, we will strive to implement a practical meal nutrition management service model through this demonstration project so that homebound elderly can continue to live healthy lives in their communities.”
Lee Hwa-seok, head of the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation at Dong-Eui Institute of Technology, stated, “As our country enters a super-aged society, this project serves as a demonstration for proactive response and policy preparation, and we will support the successful promotion of the project at the university.”
The Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Dong-Eui Institute of Technology operates the community kitchen ‘Onmaeul Sarangchae,’ which provides meal nutrition management services for homebound elderly in Busanjin-gu, and the Busanjin-gu Children’s Social Welfare Meal Management Support Center, which systematically supports meal management for children and social welfare facilities in Busanjin-gu, thereby possessing expertise in elderly meal services.
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