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Supplementary Material 1

Eating alone is a known risk factor for nutritional vulnerability in later life. Widowhood often entails loss of commensality (shared meals). This article explores this experience among older widowed women in relation to food behavior.Qualitative methods based on constructivist grounded theory were used. Interviews were conducted with 15 women living alone in the community, aged 71 to 86 years, and widowed 6 months to 15 years.Widowhood meant having significantly fewer opportunities for commensality. Participants attributed changes to their food behaviors to the loss of commensality, including food choice, fewer regular meals, and reduced work of meal preparation. These changes were attributed to the experienced difference between shared meals and meals eaten alone, no longer having the commitment of commensality, and having less interest in meal preparation in the absence of obligation or reward of commensality.Eating alone symbolized loss and was less enjoyable, yet the pleasure experienced with food was intact. Focusing on the pleasure of eating may help support women when they lose regular commensality late in life. Free from the commitment of commensality, some shifted away from regular meals and simplified their meal preparation strategies. This has implications for clinical and research endeavors.

Widowhood is a common and expected life event for married older women. Prior research has found disruptions in diet and eating behaviours to be common among widows. Little, however, is known about the process underlying these disruptions. Aiming to fill this gap, this study explored the eating behaviours of older widowed women for the purpose of generating a substantive theory to explain the changing eating behaviours of older women living in the community during the transition of widowhood. Qualitative methods based on constructivist grounded theory guided by a critical realist worldview were used. Individual active interviews were conducted with 15 women living alone in the community that were mostly independent with respect to eating behaviours. Participants were aged 71 to 86 years (mean age: 77) and had been widowed six months to 15 years at the time of the interview. Participants described a variety of educational backgrounds and levels of health, were mainly white and of Canadian or European descent, and had sufficient income to meet their needs. A substantive theory of why and how older women’s eating behaviours shift in widowhood was developed. The shifts in eating behaviours described by participants were interpreted as a process in which they were aligning their eating behaviours with their food-related self. It was found that the primary catalyst of change in behaviour as part of the widowhood experience was the loss of commensality with their spouse, that is, the loss of regular shared meals. Two sub-processes were conceptualized whereby women first fall into new patterns and then re-establish the personal food system. These sub-processes enabled women to redirect their food system from one that satisfied the couple to one that satisfied their personal food needs. A number of factors influenced the trajectory of the aligning process including the couple’s food system that women brought into the process, their experiences with nutritional care, their food-related values, the food-related resources they had access to, and the social integration they experienced. Further research is needed to include the voices of more vulnerable widowed women in the theory. Implications for research and practice are discussed.