tea and toaster

plural tea and toasters · alternative tea-and-toaster

1. informalmedicineA person, usually elderly and frail, with a diet lacking in nutrition.

   Older people with poor dietary habits ("tea and toasters") may develop iron deficiency.

   2003, Robert K. Murray et al., Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 586

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   Again, if Father San Browne, tea and toaster to that quaintesttest of yarnspinners is Padre Don Bruno, […]

   1939 May 4, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber Limited, →OCLC; republished London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1960, →OCLC, part I, page 50

   The patients with inadequate diet admitted to ingesting a diet usually devoid of folate-rich food such as liver, kidney, and vegetables other than potatoes. Several probably were "tea and toasters."

   1964, B. A. Cooper, L. Lowenstein, “Relative Folate Deficiency of Erythrocytes in Pernicious Anemia and its Correction with Cyanocobalamin,”, in Blood, volume 24, page 505