Conceptualizaciones para la construcción de los ambientes y saberes alimentarios domésticos de personas mayores

Introduction: the dietary knowledge and practices developed throughout life by older people play a fundamental role in shaping home food environments and community health. Objective: to analyze the contribution to community health of the conceptualizations that enable the construction of food knowledge of older people in domestic environments. Materials and methods: a qualitative study using Strauss and Corbin’s Grounded Theory methodology. By means of convenience sampling and obtaining the sample size by saturation point, 54 elderly people aged 60 years and over, residents of an urban commune in Chile, who signed the informed consent form, validated by the Ethics Committee, participated in the study. Data collection was carried out using a semi-structured interview and the data analysis plan was carried out according to the guidelines proposed by Strauss and Corbin, recognising open, axial and selective coding stages. Results: 72.3 % of participants were women with an average age of 68.8 years. For the construction of domestic food environments, links are conceptualized that are established between home feeding and the gender approach, highlighting in this foundation a valuation for health care or the delivery of affection, among other categorizations that allowed strengthening the recognition of the biopsychosocial contributions of food. Conclusions: the findings of the study made it possible to understand that domestic food environments are crucial spaces for promoting healthy eating, offering older people a unique opportunity to enrich their food knowledge in their families and communities.