The legislature finds that many elderly persons suffer dietary deficiencies and malnutrition due to inadequate financial resources, immobility, lack of interest due to isolation and loneliness, and characteristics of the aging process, such as physiological, social, and psychological changes which result in a way of life too often leading to feelings of rejection, abandonment, and despair. There is a real need as a matter of public policy to provide the elderly citizens with adequate nutritionally sound meals, through which their isolation may be penetrated with the company and the social contacts of their own. It is the declared purpose of RCW 28A.235.120, 28A.623.010, and 28A.623.020 to raise the level of dignity of the aged population where their remaining years can be lived in a fulfillment equal to the benefits they have bestowed, the richness they have added, and the great part they have played in the life of our society and nation.