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Changes in diet quality and body weight over 10 years: the Multiethnic Cohort Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2021

Minji Kang
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA BK21 FOUR Education and Research Team for Sustainable Food & Nutrition, Department of Food and Nutrition, College of Human Ecology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Carol J. Boushey
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA
Yurii B. Shvetsov
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA
Veronica W. Setiawan
Affiliation:
Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine and Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hee-Young Paik
Affiliation:
Department of Food and Nutrition, College of Human Ecology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea Center for Gendered Innovations in Science and Technology Researches (GISTeR), Korea Federation of Women’s Science & Technology Associations, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Lynne R. Wilkens
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA
Loic Le Marchand
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA
Song-Yi Park*
Affiliation:
Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Dr Song-Yi Park, fax +1 808 586 2982, email spark@cc.hawaii.edu
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Abstract

High-quality diets have been found to be beneficial in preventing long-term weight gain. However, concurrent changes in diet quality and body weight over time have rarely been reported. We examined the association between 10-year changes in diet quality and body weight in the Multiethnic Cohort Study. Analyses included 53 977 African Americans, Native Hawaiians, Japanese Americans, Latinos and Whites, who completed both baseline (1993–1996, 45–69 years) and 10-year follow-up (2003–2008) surveys including a FFQ and had no history of heart disease or cancer. Using multivariable regression, weight changes were regressed on changes in four diet quality indexes, Healthy Eating Index-2015, Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010, alternate Mediterranean Diet and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension scores. Mean weight change over 10 years was 1·2 (sd 6·8) kg in men and 1·5 (sd 7·2) kg in women. Compared with stable diet quality (< 0·5 sd change), the greatest increase (≥ 1 sd increase) in the diet scores was associated with less weight gain (by 0·55–1·17 kg in men and 0·62–1·31 kg in women). Smaller weight gain with improvement in diet quality was found in most subgroups by race/ethnicity, baseline age and baseline BMI. The inverse association was stronger in younger age and higher BMI groups. Ten-year improvement in diet quality was associated with a smaller weight gain, which varied by race/ethnicity and baseline age and BMI. Our findings suggest that maintaining a high-quality diet and improving diet quality over time may prevent excessive weight gain.

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Full Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society
Figure 0

Table 1. Baseline characteristics by change in Healthy Eating Index-2015 over 10 years in the Multiethnic Cohort Study(Numbers of participants; mean values and standard deviations; percentages)

Figure 1

Table 2. Change in body weight according to change in diet quality over 10 years in the Multiethnic Cohort Study(Mean values and 95 % confidence intervals)

Figure 2

Table 3. Change in body weight per 1 sd increase of diet quality over 10 years by race/ethnicity and baseline age and BMI in the Multiethnic Cohort Study(Mean values and 95 % confidence intervals)

Figure 3

Fig. 1. Change in diet quality and change in body weight over 10 years in the Multiethnic Cohort Study: (a) men and (b) women. Values are mean weight changes with 95 % confidence intervals adjusted for the following covariates: race/ethnicity; at baseline, age, BMI, education, marital status, smoking status, multivitamin use and, for women only, menopausal hormone therapy use; at baseline and change between the two surveys, physical activity and energy intake. For Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), further adjusted for alcohol intake at baseline and change between the two surveys. Changes in diet quality were categorised into four groups based on the median scores of each index at baseline as follows: (1) consistently low (reference (ref.) group), below the median value at both surveys, (2) high to low, from above to below the median, (3) low to high, from below to above the median, and (4) consistently high, above the median value at both surveys. , HEI-2015; , Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010; , alternate Mediterranean Diet score; , DASH.

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Kang et al. supplementary materials

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