Ages

Menus adapt to finding the gourmet in purées.

The old man had come for lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and he was determined to make the most of his squid and leek stir fry.

A spends his days in a wheelchair and has trouble eating solid food. But that was no impediment as he dug into his meal with a plastic turquoise spoon recently.

That's because the staff at the restaurant had puréed the stir fry in a food processor and served it to his group which was from a nearby nursing home. While it didn't look that appetizing.he finished by linking his plate clean.

B , in a suburb of.., is one of a few restaurant in Japan catering to an aging population with meals for those who have difficulty chewing or swallowing. In the way that restaurant have long offered children's menus, some are now offering special senior meals too.

.. has the world s highest proportion of people 65 and older, at more than a quarter of it's population. With it's expanding efforts to accommodate the growing population of elderly, .. offers a foretaste of the kinds of societal changes that are beginning to shake a number of wealthy places with rapidly aging populations, including many countries in Western Europe as well as South Korea.

The aging and declining population will have far reaching impacts. Declining fertility rates will possibly increase immigration. The structure of family and society will inevitably change.