Abstract
BackgroundMicronutrient malnutrition affects the well-being of both adults and children. Dietary diversity score (DDS) is a useful evaluation index with a relatively well-developed guideline by FAO. It’s meaningful to assess and predict inadequate micronutrient intakes using DDS in Chinese children, after ruling out the risk of obesity coming with more dietary diversity.MethodsData for evaluation were extracted from the Nutrition Study of Preschool Children and School Children, which is a cross-sectional study covering 8 cities of China, including 1694 children in kindergartens and primary schools. This study applied DDS to Chinese children to test the validity for micronutrient inadequacy, and then explored the relationship between dietary diversity and obesity.ResultsIt reveals that dietary diversity varied with age and place of residence; the older ones and the ones living in rural areas tend to have poorer dietary diversity. Another discovery is that DDS is positively correlated with indicators of micronutrient adequacy, with a score of 6–8 indicating the lowest risk of micronutrient inadequacy in different groups of children. In our study population, dietary diversity is not related with obesity.ConclusionsDietary diversity score is a valid indicator to evaluate micronutrient inadequacy in Chinese children, though there is still room for improvement of the method. Besides, the relationship between increase of dietary diversity and risk of obesity should be treated circumspectly.
Highlights
Micronutrient malnutrition affects the well-being of both adults and children
Dietary diversity score (DDS) is based on food groups, which is more useful than indicators based on an individual food (e.g., Food Variety Score (FVS)) in predicting nutrients adequacy, though the food groups in different researches vary a lot
Attaching certain portion size requirements to DDS will improve the correlation between DDS and micronutrients intake, which has been proved by prior researchers [5, 6]
Summary
Subjects Data were extracted from the Nutrition Study of Preschool Children and School Child, which was conducted from October 2011 to January 2012 in 8 cities of China. According to the FAO protocol, DDS was calculated based on 10 food groups, as shown in Table 1 [6]. Since its distribution wasn’t normal, we used the eq PA = estimated Child’s intake/RNI (i.e, recommended nutrient intakes), with RNI extracted from Chinese DRIs. After we got PA of all the 11 micronutrients, we computed the mean probability of adequacy (MPA), applying equal weight to individual nutrients. Percentage of children who consumed different food groups according to DDS was sorted. A certain MPA threshold was used to categorize children into low and high micronutrient intakes groups. Spearman’s correlation was tested between DDS, SDDS, FVS and BMI, Z-scores
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