Association between dietary scores and 13-year weight change and obesity risk in a French prospective cohort

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES:The relationship between diet quality and development of obesity is complex and unresolved. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the predictive value of six different dietary scores on both relative weight change and the risk of obesity after 13 years of follow-up in adults aged 45 years and older. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Six scores reflecting adherence to different nutritional recommendations (the French Programme National Nutrition Santé-Guideline Score (PNNS-GS), the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Index (DGAI), the Diet Quality IndexInternational (DQI-I), the Mediterranean Diet Scale (MDS), the relative Mediterranean Diet Score (rMED) and the Mediterranean Style Dietary Pattern Score (MSDPS)) were estimated in 3151 participants in the French SU.VI.MAX (SUpplé mentation en VItamines et Miné raux AntioXydants) study. Associations of dietary scores with 13-year weight change were assessed through multivariate linear regression models, and obesity risk was analyzed with logistic regression, providing odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). RESULTS: Except for the MSDPS, higher scores, that is, better adherence to nutritional guidelines or to a Mediterranean diet, were associated with lower weight gain in men (all P-value for trend o0.05). In addition, among men, ORs for becoming obese after 13 years associated with a 1 s.d. increase in dietary scores ranged from 0.63, 95% CI: 0.51, 0.78 for DGAI to 0.72, 95% CI: 0.59, 0.88 for MDS. These associations were weaker or not statistically significant in women. CONCLUSION: Overall, the six dietary scores predicted obesity risk equally well. Among French adults, strong adherence to dietary guidelines appears to be protective with regard to weight gain and obesity, especially in men.

Adherence to the Spanish dietary guidelines and its association with obesity in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Granada study

“…A one unit increase in adherence to the PNNS score was associated with an 11 % lower incidence of obesity (95 % CI 0·80, 0·99) after a 6-year follow-up of 3531 participants (aged 54 years and older) of the SU.VI.MAX study (17) . The same study population was used to re-evaluate this and other dietary indices after 13 years of follow-up (18) , confirming the inverse association. Among the 1720 participants of the FINRISK study, those who were men and in the highest v. lowest FDS quintile were 36 % (OR = 0·64; 95 % CI 0·47, 0·88) less likely to have abdominal obesity (19) .…”

Dietary Variety Is Inversely Associated with Body Adiposity among US Adults Using a Novel Food Diversity Index

“…Better adherence to the French Dietary Guidelines has also been associated with improved anthropometric outcomes (55). Although these associations were not always statistically significant (56,57), this is potentially due to heterogeneity in dietary measurement (58) and the strong associations between socioeconomic factors, dietary quality, and adiposity (59). Given the reduction in odds for most indicators of adiposity observed in this research, it is also possible that dietary variety, quality, and proportionality function synergistically to reduce excess adiposity.…”

Changes of dietary patterns during participation in a web-based weight-reduction programme

“…Weight gain is the result of an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure; however, the effect of different dietary factors on weight gain or weight loss remains unclear (5) . Because of the complexity of the diet, dietary pattern analysis is useful because it simultaneously reflects various aspects of the diet, has the potential to capture interactions between food and nutrients (6,7) and is an alternative to traditional methods of examining single foods or nutrients (8) . The dietary pattern approach has intuitive appeal because the human diet does not consist of a single nutrient or food, but instead represents a complex set of highly correlated dietary exposures (9)(10)(11) .…”