Abstract
Nutritional factors, including low protein intake and poor dietary variety, affect age-associated impairment in physical performance resulting in physical frailty. This cross-sectional study investigated the association between intake frequency of major high protein foods and both physical performance and higher-level functional capacity using the food frequency score (FFS) and high protein food frequency score (PFFS) among community-dwelling older adults. The data of 1185 older adults categorized into quartiles based on FFS and PFFS were analyzed. After adjusting for covariates, FFS and PFFS were significantly associated with physical performance [FFS, usual gait speed (p for trend = 0.007); PFFS, usual gait speed (p for trend < 0.001), maximum gait speed (p for trend = 0.002), timed up and go (p for trend = 0.025)], and higher-level functional capacity [FFS (p for trend < 0.001); PFFS (p for trend < 0.001)]. After excluding PFFS data, the participants’ scores were associated with only higher-level functional capacity. Multi-regression analysis with higher-level functional capacity as the covariate showed that FFS and PFFS were significantly correlated with physical performance. Hence, improving food intake frequency, particularly that of high protein foods, and dietary variety may help maintain higher-level functional capacity and physical performance in community-dwelling older adults.
Highlights
Reducing the incidence of physical frailty remains an important challenge worldwide.Physical frailty typically increases with age, with frailty among older adults being associated with increased risk of disability, hospitalization, falls, and death [1,2,3,4,5]
Several studies have indicated that nutritional factors, such as malnutrition, low protein intake, and low vitamin intake, can negatively affect age-associated impairment of physical performance resulting in physical frailty [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]
These results suggested that high protein food intake frequency was associated with physical performance and higher-level functional capacity, whereas dietary variety was associated with higher-level functional capacity
Summary
Reducing the incidence of physical frailty remains an important challenge worldwide.Physical frailty typically increases with age, with frailty among older adults being associated with increased risk of disability, hospitalization, falls, and death [1,2,3,4,5]. Several studies have indicated that nutritional factors (status), such as malnutrition, low protein intake, and low vitamin intake, can negatively affect age-associated impairment of physical performance resulting in physical frailty [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Malnutrition further increases an individual’s risk of developing sarcopenia and has been associated with low physical performance [8,13]. Dietary protein intake, which is necessary for muscle protein synthesis, has been the focus of several epidemiologic investigations [14,15]. A previous study suggested that greater dietary protein may help slow age-related loss of lean muscle mass [16], and a recent meta-analysis showed a positive dose–response relationship between protein intake and muscle mass increase [17]
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