Food habits may change during the transition to retirement

Retirement is one of the significant turning points in life, which is accompanied by changes in many aspects of life, including use of time, daily routines, income level and social networks.

These changes may also predispose or lead to changes in food habits. However, the research results in this area have been inconsistent: depending on study, they have reported both worsening diets and improvements in food habits after retirement, or no change at all.

In their recent study, Lagström, Lahdenperä et al. examined changes in red meat, fish, vegetables and fruit consumption during retirement transition. In addition, they investigated whether these changes vary by sex, marital status, preretirement occupational position and financial hardship.

The research sample consisted of about 2 500 participants from the Whitehall II study, a cohort of British civil servants. Participants provided data on dietary measures before and after retirement transition during a 32-year follow-up.

This study confirmed previous observations suggesting that men and those with low occupational status consume more red meat than women and those from higher occupational status, who in turn eat fish, vegetables and fruits more frequently. However, red meat consumption seems to increase after retirement, especially among women, singles and those from lower occupational status. Furthermore, regardless of sociodemographic factors, the increase in fish, vegetable and fruit consumption was stronger during the preretirement period than postretirement period.

All in all, the transition to retirement is related to both healthy and unhealthy dietary changes because of the increases in consumption of fish, vegetables and fruits, as well as red meat. These changes varied to some extent by sex, marital status and preretirement occupational status, but these results are not completely consistent with previous studies.
However, this study as well as some previous studies, show that female sex, higher education, living in a relationship and higher income are associated with healthier food habits. The authors emphasize that there is the need for strategies to promote healthy eating habits in accordance with the recommendations for retirement.

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Lagström, H., Lahdenperä, M., Ravyse, C., Akbaraly, T., Kivimaki, M., Pentti, J., Stenholm, S. & Head, J. (2024) Changes in food habits during the transition to retirement: the Whitehall II cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2024-222690