Assessing the Association of Food Preferences and Self-Reported Psychological Well-Being among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Contemporary China-Results from the China Health and Nutrition Survey

Abstract

China has undergone rapid social transitions within the last few decades. However, mental health issues, challenges to psychological well-being, and poor dietary choices have gradually surfaced. These health concerns are related to the rapid growth of the aging population and of the fast-paced industrialized society. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge about food preferences and psychological well-being measurements in contemporary China. Applying the 2011 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) with a cross-sectional study design (n = 7970), we conducted multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the associations of food preferences, including fast food, salty snacks, fruits, vegetables, and sweetened beverages, with psychological well-being among Chinese middle-aged and older adults (age ≥ 45). Food preferences are mostly associated with psychological well-being (p < 0.05). However, respondents’ preferences regarding fast food, salty snacks, and sweetened beverages are associated not only with poorer psychological health status, but also with positive psychological well-being. We speculate that Chinese older adults may consume Westernized fast food and salty snacks as pleasure to the palate due to the recent Westernization in modern China. We also provide practical implications of results from this preliminary study.

Food Liking-Based Diet Quality Indexes (DQI) Generated by Conceptual and Machine Learning Explained Variability in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Young Adults

“…Self-reported food likes and dislikes appears to capture habitual dietary intake. Food likes connect markers of taste genetics to intake [57,58] or health [30], correlate with self-reported intake [21,[27][28][29][30][31], and associate with biomarkers of consumption [21,32,33] and health outcomes [20][21][22][23][24]32,33].…”

“…Dietary histories or FFQ increase the likelihood of capturing usual intake, but may suffer from over/under reporting bias, difficulty of remembering the type and frequency of foods consumed, challenges of converting what is consumed into frequency categories, and participant and researcher cost/time [19]. Liking surveys show promise as a tool to assess dietary intake [20][21][22][23] and for examining related health outcomes [24] based on the assumption that, over time, we tend to eat what we like and avoid what we do not. In some scientific literature, the terms food preference or liking are used interchangeably with food consumption (e.g., [25,26]).…”

Rural Versus Urban Patients: Benchmarking the Outcomes of Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction in Shanxi, China from 2013 to 2017

“…Second, Western-style diets have been widely adopted and accepted as a routine eating pattern in the urban areas, but it is less far-reaching in the rural areas because of lower economic growth and less population density [ 36 ]. Lee and her colleagues reported that Westernized fast food was linked with poorer psychological health status among the Chinese population [ 37 ]. With Western-style diets being more and more integrated into daily lives of urban residents, we are expecting a worrying enlarging gap of mortality between rural and urban patients in the future.…”

Association Between Self-Reported Food Preferences and Psychological Well-Being During Perimenopausal Period Among Chinese Women

“…Therefore, we only used the food preferences data to determine dietary practice. In a way, the food preference can indicate both individuals' food consumption habits and their attitudes for different types of food for long-term than 3-day 24 h dietary recall method (Lee et al, 2018). More various or objective indicators of food consumption should be used in future studies.…”

“…Accordingly, research on food preferences should be strengthened with rapid change of dietary. Additionally, only one cross-sectional study examined the relationship between psychological well-being and food preference among adults aged over 45 years (Lee et al, 2018).…”