The number of meals served to senior citizens daily by the Flathead County Agency on Aging hasn’t changed much in the last two decades, but the ways those meals are delivered has changed, the agency’s program manager says.

J.R. Isles, program manager at the Agency on Aging, said when he started working for the county 18 years ago, about 60 percent of the senior meals were served at congregate dining sites and 40 percent were delivered to houses.

Today those percentages have switched, Isles said.

A daily average hot meal count is 300, he said. Almost half of the meals are served or delivered in Kalispell — about 120 per day. Of that number, he said, typically 80 are home deliveries and 40 are served at one of the two dining rooms in Kalispell, which serve lunch Monday through Friday.

The other 180 meals are dispersed around the county on that same general 60-40 percent split, he said.

Congregate meals are served five days a week in Columbia Falls and Whitefish, too. Three days a week people can dine on site in Bigfork, and two days a week meals are served in Lakeside.

In addition to the daily hot meals, the agency offers frozen meals to senior citizens. The biggest delivery day for those is Friday, he said, because no hot meals are served on the weekends. Each week, between 70 and 90 frozen meals are packed into volunteers’ autos and delivered throughout the county.

Isles says the change in dining habits of seniors is being reflected across the U.S., not just in Flathead County.

Centers where high numbers of diners choose to eat on site, rather than eat meals delivered to their homes, seem to draw people in because of offerings besides just lunch, Isles said.

“Senior citizens who go to centers for lunch are also looking for other opportunities, not just meals or cards or bingo,” he said. “The centers that are doing really well do other stuff, too, like offer trips, have really big exercise rooms or offer computer training.”

Other senior centers have added thrift shops to their buildings to draw in even more people. Some have taken the word “senior” out of their names and refer to their facilities as community centers. Others lease their space to all sorts of groups, again to bring more people to the sites, he said.

Isles is a fan of congregate meals because he says it offers seniors the opportunity to “get out of the house once in a while and get companionship.”

He and other senior leaders have talked for years about how to reverse the trend to get more people to eat at the community sites, rather than have meals delivered.

“I think it’s just a change in the way people want to interact,” Isles said. “Not everyone wants to change.”

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.