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Associations between taste preferences and chronic diseases: a population-based exploratory study in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2020

Hanqi Li
Affiliation:
School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
Peng Jia
Affiliation:
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong kong, China International Initiative on Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology (ISLE), Hong Kong, China
Teng Fei*
Affiliation:
School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
*
*Corresponding author: Email feiteng@whu.edu.en
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Abstract

Objective:

To explore the associations between dietary tastes and chronic diseases quantitatively.

Design:

We used the Geodetector method to establish associations between seven tastes and a variety of chronic diseases from the perspective of spatial stratified heterogeneity and explained the effects of dietary tastes on the spatial distribution of chronic diseases.

Setting:

We used crowdsourcing online recipe data to extract multiple taste information about cuisines, combined with point of interest data on categorised restaurant data in different regions, to quantitatively analyse the taste preferences of people in different regions.

Participants:

Crowdsourcing online recipe data and restaurant data in different regions.

Results:

The results showed that sixteen diseases were significantly associated with dietary tastes among the seventy-one types of chronic diseases. Compared with the effects of individual tastes, the interactions of tastes increased the risk of sixteen diseases, and many combinations of tastes produced nonlinear enhancement effects on the risk for diseases.

Conclusions:

This study presents a quantitative study approach based on the crowdsourcing of data to explore potential health risk factors, which can be applied to the exploratory analysis of disease aetiology and help public health authorities to develop corresponding interventions.

Information

Type
Research paper
Copyright
© The Authors 2020
Figure 0

Fig. 1 Seasonings of a dish (captured from Meishijie.com)

Figure 1

Fig. 2 Data processing and research flow

Figure 2

Table 1 Numbers of recipes and cuisine taste indexes

Figure 3

Fig. 3 Proportions of various types of POI in provincial regions. , Chuan; , Dongbei; , Gangtai; , Hubei; , Hu; , Hui; , Jing; , Lu; , Min; , Qingzhen; , Su; , Xibei; , Xiang; , Yue; , Yungui; , Zhe. POI, points of interest

Figure 4

Fig. 4 Standardised indexes of seven tastes in provincial regions

Figure 5

Table 2 Q-statistics for the factor detector*

Figure 6

Table 3 Results of the interaction detector

Figure 7

Fig. 5 Standardised mortality of haemorrhagic stroke in provincial regions

Figure 8

Fig. 6 Risk detector results for haemorrhagic stroke (NB(6): natural break method, six levels)