Association Between Loneliness and Nutrition Literacy Among Adults Aged 65–74 Receiving Institutional Care

In institutional care, nutrition practices are shaped by mealtime arrangements, while residents’ nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors remain relevant. This study examined the association between overall loneliness and nutrition literacy among residents aged 65–74 and whether social and emotional loneliness showed different patterns of association with the five nutrition literacy subscales and the total score. In this cross-sectional study, 142 residents of three private care facilities in Isparta, Türkiye, were recruited by convenience sampling between November and December 2025. The Loneliness Scale for Elderly and the Nutrition Literacy Scale for Early-Stage Older Adults were administered in face-to-face interviews. Associations were examined using Spearman correlations with Benjamini–Hochberg correction and hierarchical multiple linear regression adjusted for sociodemographic covariates; social and emotional loneliness were entered jointly in exploratory models. Total loneliness was negatively associated with total nutrition literacy (rs = −0.335), including after adjustment, although the additional variance explained was small (β = −0.187; ΔR2 = 0.028). Social loneliness was negatively correlated with all subscales and the total score and remained negatively associated with nutrition attitude, nutrition behavior, and the total score in adjusted models. Emotional loneliness was negatively correlated only with the knowledge-based subscales, whereas its conditional coefficients were positive in the joint adjusted models. These results were unchanged in sensitivity analyses using bootstrap confidence intervals and heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors. The findings indicate that loneliness dimensions should be examined separately, as the total score may obscure opposing associations. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference, and multicenter longitudinal studies are needed.