Socio-Demographic Determinants of Diet Quality in Australian Adults Using the Validated Healthy Eating Index for Australian Adults (HEIFA-2013)

Abstract

Diet quality indices have been shown to predict cardiovascular disease, cancer, Type 2 Diabetes, obesity and all-cause mortality. This study aimed to determine the socio-demographics of Australian adults with poor diet quality. Diet quality was assessed for participants of the 2011–2012 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey aged 18 years or above (n = 9435), with the validated 11-component Healthy Eating Index for Australians (HEIFA-2013), based on the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines. Differences in scores by demographics (ANOVA) and regression models for associations between the HEIFA-2013 score and demographic characteristics were conducted. The mean (SD) HEIFA-2013 score was 45.5 (14.7) out of 100 due to poor intakes of vegetables, fruit, grains, dairy and fat and high intakes of added sugar, sodium and discretionary foods. Lower mean HEIFA-2013 scores (SD) were found for males 43.3 (14.7), young-adults 41.6 (14.2) obese 44.1 (14.3), smokers 40.0 (14.2), low socio-economic status 43.7 (14.9) and Australian country-of-birth 44.2 (14.6) (p < 0.05). The overall diet quality of the Australian population is poor and targeted interventions for young-adults, males, obese and those with lower socio-economic status are recommended.

Higher diet quality in university students is associated with higher academic achievement: a cross‐sectional study

“…Accurate assessment of dietary intake is essential to substantiate the link with academic achievement (7,8) ; for example, using validated dietary assessment tools and, ideally, a broad or holistic assessment of diet that goes beyond individual food groups or meal patterns. Furthermore, key factors that are known to influence diet or academic achievement need to be accounted for to more accurately assess this relationship, such as socio-economic status and gender (9,10) . In addition, five of the seven studies included in the review were conducted in America (5) , highlighting that there is no great diversity in the samples studied so far.…”

Work Me Not Into Temptation: Exploring the Relationship between Work and Healthy Eating in Dieters Using Data from the HILDA Survey

“…A very basic measure of healthy eating is used in this analysis. This measure has been used in other studies exploring eating behaviour in an Australian population (Cobb‐Clark et al ) However, using a more detailed measurement of eating, such as a 24 hour recall food diary or a healthy eating measure validated for an Australian population such as the Healthy Eating Index for Australian Adults (HEIFA‐2013) (Grech et al ), may be able to give a more detailed picture of how market activities impact on dieting resolve.…”

Association between dietary glycaemic load and selected demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle factors in a group of adult Poles in Lower Silesia – Results of the PURE Poland Study

“…The results of numerous studies have shown that high GI and/or high GL diets may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes [24], cardiovascular disease [13,14,15], metabolic syndrome [25] and cancer [26,27] development. On the other hand, many authors have proved that higher diet quality was associated with higher socio-economic status, including such determinants as: income, working status, marital status, and level of education [28,29,30,31]. A previous study conducted in Poland also showed a relationship between gender, age and level of education, and the nutritional value of the diets [32].…”

“…Dietary glycaemic load is a value that strongly correlates with the energy and macronutrient intake and therefore many authors propose to adjust GL for total energy intake [26,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. However some authors discuss the results of their studies only with reference to the overall dietary glycaemic load [38,39].…”