Abstract
Understanding patterns of dietary change over time can provide important information regarding population nutrition behaviours. The aims were to investigate change in diet quality over 12 years in a nationally representative sample of women born in 1946–1951 and to identify characteristics of women whose diet quality changed over time. The Australian Recommended Food Score (ARFS) was measured in 2001 (n = 10,629, mean age 52.1 years) and 2013 (n = 9115; n = 8161 for both time points) for the mid-aged cohort from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. Participants were categorised by tertiles of baseline diet quality and also classified as ‘diet quality worsened’ (ARFS decrease ≤ −4 points, n = 2361), ‘remained stable’ (−3 ≤ change in ARFS ≤ 3 points, n = 3077) or ‘improved’ (ARFS increase ≥ 4 points, n = 2723). On average, ARFS total and subscale scores remained relatively stable over time (mean [SD] change 0.3 [7.6] points) with some regression to the mean. Women whose diet quality worsened were more likely to be highly physically active at baseline compared with women whose diet quality improved (p < 0.001). Among women with poor diet quality initially (lowest baseline ARFS tertile, n = 2451, mean [SD] baseline ARFS 22.8 [4.5] points), almost half (47%, n = 1148) had not improved after 12 years, with women less likely to be in the healthy weight range (41% compared to 44%) and be never smokers (56% versus 62%, p < 0.05) compared with those whose diet improved. Diet quality remained relatively stable over 12 years’ follow up among mid-aged women. Almost half of those with poor baseline diet quality remained poor over time, emphasizing the need to target high-risk groups for nutrition interventions.
Highlights
Diet quality is an important predictor of all-cause morbidity and mortality [1,2,3]
This research uses data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH), the methods for which have been described in detail elsewhere and are available at www.alswh.org [9,10,11]
Women whose diet quality remained poor/worsened were less likely to be in the healthy weight range (41% compared to 44%) and be never smokers (56% compared to 62%), p < 0.05
Summary
Diet quality is an important predictor of all-cause morbidity and mortality [1,2,3]. Diet quality indices such as the Australian Recommended Food Score [4] provide a measure of overall diet variety, nutritional quality, and/or alignment with national dietary guidelines. While higher diet quality is associated with lower all-cause and cardiovascular disease- and cancer-specific morbidity and Nutrients 2020, 12, 147; doi:10.3390/nu12010147 www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients. Improved diet quality over time, measured using a range of diet quality indices, has been associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease [6] as well as total and cause-specific mortality [7,8]. A 20 percentile points increase in diet quality scores
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