Abstract
We examined food combinations in relation to the quality of the overall diet and individual meals using a newly developed food combination questionnaire (FCQ) in a nationwide sample of Japanese adults aged 19–80 years (n = 2233). The quality of the overall diet and of each meal was assessed by the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) and Nutrient-Rich Food Index 9.3 (NRF9.3). For all main meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), the most commonly consumed food combinations consisted of ‘rice, total vegetables, and tea and coffee’. Consistently positive associations between these food combinations and diet quality were found for breakfast (Spearman r: ≥0.46). Positive rather weak associations between these food combinations and diet quality were also observed for lunch (Spearman r: ≤0.48). Conversely, the associations were inconsistent for dinner: inverse associations with HEI-2015 (Spearman r: ≤−0.35) and generally weak positive associations with NRF9.3 (Spearman r: ≥0.09). For snacks, the most commonly consumed food combinations consisted of ‘confectioneries and tea and coffee’, but these showed rather weak associations with diet quality. Similar results were obtained when associations with the quality of overall diet were investigated. The FCQ may be useful in capturing the complex nature of food combinations in Japanese adults.
Highlights
Efforts to overcome the limitations of evaluating single nutrients and foods in isolation have led to a gradual shift in nutrition research to the evaluation of dietary patterns [1,2]
The investigation of dietary patterns is generally performed in terms of the daily intake of individual foods or food groups [3,4,5,6], an increasing number of studies have focused on dietary intake at the level of each eating occasion or meal patterns [7,8,9]
We developed a self-administered dietary assessment questionnaire, namely a food combination questionnaire (FCQ), to characterize food combinations in each meal on the basis of our meal coding system
Summary
Efforts to overcome the limitations of evaluating single nutrients and foods in isolation have led to a gradual shift in nutrition research to the evaluation of dietary patterns [1,2]. A practical examination of meal patterns or food combinations requires the development of unique codes for meals [15], and the development of inexpensive and practical assessment tools (e.g., questionnaires) [9,22,23]. Such a meal coding system will be essential in the development of Internet-delivered personalized dietary analysis [24] as well as Internet-based self-administered dietary assessment tools [25,26]
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