Clustering of lifestyle factors in Spanish university students: the relationship between smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and diet quality

Abstract

Objective: To ascertain the prevalence of and association between main lifestyle factors (diet, physical activity, alcohol consumption and smoking) in students from the Balearic Islands University. Design: A cross-sectional, descriptive study. A questionnaire including questions on lifestyle, dietary habits and physical activity habits was administered to the students. Four different diet quality scores were calculated (Diet Diversity Score, Mediterranean Diet Score, Dietary Guidelines Score and Global Dietary Guidelines Score). Setting: A sample of students from the Balearic Islands University. Subjects: Nine hundred and eighty-seven students (45?5 % males; mean age 21?5 (SD 3?3) years). Results: The dietary pattern of the student population was characterized by a low consumption of cereals and tubers, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, legumes and nuts, and a high consumption of processed meat, sweets, snacks, soft drinks and pastries. Linear, positive and statistically significant correlations were found between the number of meals consumed daily and all of the diet quality scores determined. Determinants of diet quality, both in the univariate and multivariate analyses, were physical activity practice, sex, age and number of meals consumed daily. Conclusions: Risk factors such as smoking, diet and physical inactivity had a tendency of clustering among Spanish university students. Overall diet quality was low, due to important departures from dietary recommendations and loss of the traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern. Nutritional education campaigns that include promotion of physical activity practice are needed to improve the overall health status of this population. Keywords Diet Physical activity Smoking Alcohol drinking University studentsCurrently, there is extensive evidence that lifestyle factors, such as unhealthy diet, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and sedentary lifestyle, contribute to an increase in morbidity and mortality due to the development of chronic diseases such as CVD, type 2 diabetes and cancer, among others (1,2) .Despite the fact that most studies have focused on the independent effect of each lifestyle factor on disease risk, recent publications have studied the synergistic effect of several combined lifestyle factors on health risk (3)(4)(5)(6)(7) . This is particularly important given that lifestyle factors tend to cluster in individuals (8)(9)(10)(11) . Hence, the study of the clustering of risk factors has important implications on both disease risk and the development of preventive interventions targeting the combination of risk factors rather than individual risk factors.As recent studies suggest, physical activity and diet are key factors for health maintenance, sharing -even synergistically -physiological mechanisms affecting the global metabolism (12,13) .It is well known that the prevalence of smoking, alcohol consumption and physical inactivity is increasing in Spanish adolescents and young adults, but information on the clustering of these behaviours is s...

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