Social Support in Context and its Association with Three Healthy Diet Indicators

Abstract

Few studies have examined the association between social support and dietary intake in ethnic minority populations. The notion of social support involves a complexity that is often ignored in research. We quantified emotional and functional support, and contact frequency from various social sources, and created four factors of social integration, to investigate their combined effect on three diet indicators, the USDA Healthy Eating Index (HEI), the American Heart Association's healthy diet recommendations (AHA-DQ), and the AHA Life's Simple-7 (LSS) healthy diet score. In multivariate linear regression for HEI and AHA and multivariate logistic regression for LSS, no significant associations were found between a general measure of social support and dietary quality. However, when examining social support in context, greater functional support from immediate family was associated with healthier HEI, greater contact with extended family with healthier AHA, greater contact with neighbors with healthier HEI and LSS, greater engagement in recreational activities with healthier HEI and AHA, and greater church activities with healthier HEI. Greater contact with friends was associated with less healthy HEI scores, and greater emotional support from neighbors with less healthy HEI and LSS scores. Compared to men, women were more likely to have a healthier LSS with greater contact with neighbors, but were less likely of a healthier LSS with greater emotional support from neighbors. Findings point to the importance of investigating the influence of distinct individual social environments on the adoption of healthy diets as a relevant factor for interventions aimed at improving individual's diet quality