A lacto-ovo-vegetarian dietary pattern is protective against sarcopenic obesity: A cross-sectional study of elderly Chinese people

Lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet is inversely associated with the osteosarcopenia in older adults

“…In this cross-sectional study of community older adults in Northeast China we identified three primary dietary patterns using PCA as follows: an aquatic products-meat dietary pattern, a lacto-ovo-vegetarian dietary pattern, and a pork-sugar-oil dietary pattern, accounting for 30.4% of the dietary variations in the population. Compared to a previous study [ 19 ] on the relationship between dietary patterns and sarcopenic-obesity, only slight differences were found in the components of these three dietary patterns ( Fig. 2 ), which suggests they are representative of the dietary habits of community-dwelling elder individuals in northeast China.…”

“…In the present study, we collected participants’ food intake information over the past year using a validated [ 19 , 20 ] self-reported FFQ. The survey included 22 food groups that represent Chinese eating habits and nutritional needs and recorded the frequency of intake for each food group; nine categories of frequency were included, ranging from never consumed to three or more times daily.…”

“…Sarcopenia was diagnosed as a combination of the following: low SMI, low muscle strength, and/or low physical performance [ 25 ]. Consistent with another previous publication by our research group [ 19 ], as we measured body skeletal muscle mass (SMM) using a bioelectrical impedance analysis using an HBF-701 body composition analyser (Omron, Kyoto, Japan) rather than appendage skeletal muscle (SMI was calculated as SMM divided by height squared), the cut-off value was selected as the mean of body SMI in healthy adults minus two standard deviations [ 26 , 27 ]. Low SMI was defined as < 5.78 kg/m 2 in men and < 4.58 kg/m 2 in women.…”

“…Subsequently, the frequencies were entered into PCA and varimax (orthogonal) rotation was applied for greater interpretability. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test of sampling adequacy (> 0.6) and Bartlett’s sphericity test ( P < 0.05) were used to judge the applicability of the data to PCA [ 19 , 29 ]. The number of principal components (dietary patterns) retained was based on the eigenvalues (> 1.0), first inflection point of the scree plots, and interpretability of the components [ 29 ].…”

“…Previous studies have explored the association between dietary patterns and osteopenia or sarcopenia [ 17 , 18 ], which reported that “Healthy” and “Milk/dairy” patterns were associated with a decreased risk of low BMD, whereas the “Meat/Western” patterns showed a significant positive association with low BMD, and mediterranean diet was positively associated with muscle function in older adults. Besides, a previous study reported the relationship between lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet and sarcopenic-obesity [ 19 ], however, to our knowledge, no studies have yet investigated the relationship between dietary patterns and osteosarcopenia. Therefore, in the present study, we aimed to obtain the dietary patterns of community-dwelling older adults in Northeast China, and explore the association between different dietary patterns and osteosarcopenia.…”