From ‘Meal Crisis’ to ‘Dietary Wellness’: Integrating the Spanish Longevity Diet into Catering Service Innovation and Culinary Education in China

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-797-2_13How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Longevity diet; Elderly tourism catering; Dietary wellness; Culinary education; Menu innovation

Abstract

This study addresses prevalent issues in China’s elderly tourism catering, such as high levels of oil and salt, poor digestibility, and neglect of dietary contraindications for chronic diseases. It introduces the Spanish “Longevity Diet” concept and the Mediterranean dietary model to construct an integrated innovation framework combining menu design, nutritional assessment, and culinary education. Through experimental replication and age-friendly adaptation of four representative Spanish longevity dishes, and by adhering to the principles of “low salt, low fat, soft texture, high protein, and easy digestion,” a 7-day prototype menu for elderly-friendly tourism meals was developed. Evaluations involving participants aged 55 and above through trial tastings and semi-structured interviews suggested that the proposed cross- culturally integrated menu demonstrates preliminary feasibility and potential acceptability. Given the small sample size and exploratory design, findings should be interpreted as preliminary. Furthermore, the study proposes integrating these findings into the vocational culinary education curriculum system by promoting the development of a “Silver-Haired Diet Design” micro-course, thereby providing a viable pathway to enhance the quality of elderly tourism catering and support healthy longevity.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Junyi Xu
AU  - Jie Hao
AU  - Junjie Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/14
TI  - From ‘Meal Crisis’ to ‘Dietary Wellness’: Integrating the Spanish Longevity Diet into Catering Service Innovation and Culinary Education in China
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Lifespan Innovation (ICLI 2026) national Conference on Lifespan Innovation
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 115
EP  - 125
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-797-2_13
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-797-2_13
ID  - Xu2026
ER  -