Objective: To analyse changes in food choices, diet-related risk factors and their association during 6 months of military service. Design: Longitudinal cohort study in Finland, where all men are liable to military service and a clear majority of each age group completes service. Dietary intake data were collected by self-administered questionnaire before and at 6 months of service. Three dietary indices based on food frequencies were developed to characterize the diet: Sugar Index, Fibre Index and Fat Index. Thirteen dietrelated risk factors were measured at the beginning and at 6 months of service. Setting: Military environment, two geographically distinct garrisons. Subjects: Male conscripts aged 18-21 years (n 256) performing military service. Results: During 6 months of service, positive changes concerned more frequent use of fibre-rich foods (P 5 0?011), improved body composition (BMI, waist circumference, muscle mass, fat mass and percentage body fat, P # 0?003 for all), decreased systolic blood pressure and increased HDL cholesterol (P , 0?001 for both). Negative changes concerned more frequent use of sugar-rich foods and increased total cholesterol, TAG and blood glucose (P , 0?001 for all). The consumption of fibre-rich foods was inversely associated with anthropometric risk factors at baseline and with sugar-rich foods at both time points. Conclusions: Despite more frequent consumption of sweet foods, military service with a unified, nutritionally planned diet, a controlled environment and high physical load has a positive effect on conscripts' health risk factors. The negative changes in blood lipids and glucose may reflect more varied free-time eating.
Keywords
Food habits Food intake Risk factors Health status indicators MilitaryPublic health interest in chronic diseases during past decades has concentrated mainly on CVD and their associations with diet (1)(2)(3)(4) . This focus has remained to the present (5-7) although the dietary factors of interest have varied in time. High importance has been given to the association between CVD risk factors and fat, especially saturated fat (3,4,8) regarding which considerable dietary improvements have taken place in Finland. Proportions of both total and saturated fat have decreased, as has consumption of foods high in them (5,6,9) . Also other dietary factors have been successfully addressed with a simultaneous decrease in CVD risk factors. Examples of this are increased fruit and vegetable consumption and decreased sodium intake (5-7) .More recently emphasis has been put on the association between sugar and CVD with its risk factors (10)(11)(12) .Attention has been paid to dietary sugars in general and to sugar-sweetened beverages (10,12,13) . Evidence exists for an association between the consumption of added sugars and CHD among men (13) . More precisely, the relationship may be connected to the current prevalent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages such as soft drinks (10)(11)(12) . Also, Bremer et al. (14) found adolescents' increased consu...