I've noticed that preferring sweets and breads over proteins seems to be a problem among the elderly.

I know that during the last few years before my MIL went into a nursing home, all she wanted was sweets. Meats and vegetables didn't taste good to her: "they don't have a taste", and it had gotten to the point where about all she could taste was sweet (and perhaps salty, but she was mostly into sweets)

My mother was still eating a little bit of meat and some of the starchier veggies during the last year or two of her life, but she also started eating more and more sweets.

I don't know for either one of them how much of the preference for sweets was habit, and how much was just that their taste buds weren't detecting much of anything other than sweet.

With so many people so hooked on carbs, carbs, carbs when younger, I wonder how futile all efforts would be to get the elderly to cut back on carbs to preserve their NSCs.

We blame the nursing homes for feeding their patients mostly carbs, but if the patients can't taste much of anything other than sweet, they're not going to eat enough if you give them mostly meat and veggies, because sometimes they won't eat enough if their meals aren't mostly carbs, preferably sweet carbs.