MAHOPAC - It was just another morning at the William Koehler Memorial Senior Center: Women were sewing, men were playing pool - and seven demonstrators, average age 76, were picketing outside, demanding doughnuts.

They wore sandwich boards proclaiming, “Give Us Our Just Desserts” and “They're Carbs, Not Contraband.”

At issue is a decision to refuse free doughnuts, pies and breads that were being donated to senior centers around Putnam County. Officials were concerned that the county was setting a bad nutritional precedent by providing mounds of doughnuts and other sweets to seniors.

Stan Tuttle, coordinator of nutritional services for the county's Office for the Aging, said the program had gotten out of control and as many as 16 cases a day of breads, cakes and pastries were being delivered, by various means, to the senior center each day.

Some were moldy and some had been stored overnight in the trunks of volunteers' cars, he said.

Caregivers there and elsewhere say the doughnut debate illustrates the difficulty of balancing nutrition and choice when providing meals to the elderly.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said, “Senior citizens can walk down to the store and buy doughnuts. Nobody's stopping them.”

But he notes that older people have high rates of heart disease and high blood pressure and says senior citizen centers, nursing homes and assisted-living centers should not be worsening the health problems of seniors.

“A senior is not a child,” said Silvia Ponce, director of the North East Bronx Senior Citizen Center, where locals 60 and up gather for lunch (suggested contribution $1.50) five times a week. “We don't tell them what to do, we don't force them to eat what's good for them. But we certainly don't give them anything that's bad for them.”

The church-basement senior center, one of 325 under the New York City Department for the Aging, has a mostly Italian-American clientele, a Naples-born cook and a rotating lunch menu that includes eggplant parmigiana, linguini with clams and manicotti.

“We try to give them what they like,” said the cook, Stella Bruno. “They like Italian food.”

The center opens at 9 a.m. and offers coffee, tea, bagels and rolls in the morning, but nothing in the doughnut family.

“The sweetest thing here is the raisin in the raisin bagel,” said Nicholas Volpicella, 87.

No desserts are offered, either, but there's a sheet cake at the monthly birthday party, “and sometimes, a couple has a wedding anniversary and they bring in cookies,” Ponce said.

Chris Miller, spokesman for the department, said a senior center on the Lower East Side, in contrast, would offer Chinese specialties for its Chinese clientele.

The lunches have to supply one-third of the federal minimum daily requirements in such categories as calories, protein, Vitamin C and Vitamin A, he said.

Anne Williams, who directs the food service for the assisted-living center at the private Wartburg Adult Care Community in Mount Vernon, said residents get to pick from a menu with several choices.

“We provide guidance on keeping to a low-salt diet or a low-fat diet or a low-cholesterol diet, but this is not a nursing home,” she said. “If somebody wants waffles with butter and syrup, we don't say no. It's their decision.”

“For many of these people, the meal is what they look forward to most.” she added. “But no, we don't give them boxes of doughnuts.”

Maureen Janowski, director of nutrition resources for Morrison Senior Dining in Atlanta, which provides meals at more than 370 senior living communities, says residents' food preferences depend somewhat on their age.

Her research finds that those born between 1901 and 1925 generally prefer “meat and potatoes,” and those born between 1925 and 1942 are “a little more trendy, a little more adventurous, a lot more nutrition-savvy,” she said.

“We plan our meals on what our history shows us our residents will eat,” she says. “They have choices, and we show them how to make good choices.”

The range of choice depends on level of care, of course. Residents of most nursing homes have fewer choices than the more independent seniors in assisted living.

Mary Klepack, nutrition site manager at the Koehler center, said dessert was served once a week - cherry pie or banana cake, for example. The picketers outside said they were objecting not to a lack of sweets but to the doughnuts being banned without any consultation with them.

“Lack of respect is what it's all about,” said Joe Hajkowski, 75, of Putnam Valley, a former labor union official who organized the demonstration. He said officials had implied that seniors were gorging themselves on jelly doughnuts and were too senile to make the choice for themselves.

C. Michael Sibilia of Mahopac said, “I'm 86, not 8.”

Inside, some seniors said they missed the doughnuts but some said they were glad to see them go.

“It was disgusting the way people went after them,” said Rita Jorgensen, 80, of Mahopac. “I think the senior center did them a favor by taking it away.”

Among the other places that commonly serve food to the elderly are casinos, which get plenty of business from busloads of seniors on day trips organized by senior centers.

Alyce Parker, a spokeswoman for Harrah's, which owns four casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., said a discount on a casino's all-you-can-eat buffet is often part of the package seniors buy.

Bruno, the cook at the Bronx center, said she tries to help the seniors avoid the bad buffet choices.

As a group was departing for Atlantic City last week, she was handing them bag lunches - with a roast beef sandwich, cranberry juice and carrot sticks.

“Protein, vitamin C, vitamin A,” she said.