Abstract
Background: We aimed to investigate the association between the energy density (ED) of diet and body composition components in Iranian adults.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study on 267 adults in Tehran. We obtained ED (kcal/g) using the two most common methods: ED1, ED from foods only with the exclusion of all beverages and ED2, from foods and all beverages. Body composition was measured using a multifrequency bio-impedance analysis. To find a strong association, we used both the linear and binary regression analysis in the three adjusted models.Results: The mean of ED1 and ED2 was 1.34 ± 0.23 and 0.89 ± 0.20 kcal/g, respectively. Increasing the ED of diet in both methods was associated with a high intake of dietary fat, of saturated fatty acid (SFA), of monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), of oleic and linoleic acids, accompanied by a low intake of fruits, vegetables, and some vitamins and minerals. There was a significant positive relationship between fat-free mass index (FFMI) and ED1 (β = 4.44, p = 0.02). However, we found no significant association between the consumption of ED1 and fat mass index (FMI) (0.28; 95% CI 0.08, 0.98; p = 0.07), and abdominal obesity (0.91; 95% CI 0.43, 1.94; p = 0.82). Also, ED2 had no association with FMI (0.86; 95% CI 0.26, 2.80; p = 0.81) and abdominal obesity (0.78; 95% CI 0.35, 1.72; p = 0.54). No significant associations were found between ED and other anthropometric indices and body composition components after considering the confounders.Conclusion: This study supports the positive association between ED and poor dietary quality. However, our findings did not show significant associations of dietary energy density (DED) with anthropometric indices and body composition components. Further well-designed studies are required to investigate the exact link between DED and body composition.
Highlights
Measuring body composition, especially energy needs and nutritional status, is very important due to its important clinical applications, in the assessment and management of obesity and its related comorbidities [1]
Based on WHO guidelines, we considered body mass index (BMI) 25–29.9 kg/m2 to classify overweight, BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 as obese, Waist circumference (WC) ≥ 102 cm for men and ≥88 cm for women, and waist to hip ratio (WHR) > 0.9 for men and >0.85 for women were used as the markers of abdominal obesity [30]
WC and hip circumference (HC) increased from tertiles 1 to 3 of ED1 (p = 0.04, p = 0.02), and WHR increased from the first to the last tertile of ED2 (p = 0.03), none of them were significantly different (p = 0.12, p = 0.07, and p = 0.08, respectively)
Summary
Especially energy needs and nutritional status, is very important due to its important clinical applications, in the assessment and management of obesity and its related comorbidities [1]. The prevalence of abdominal obesity is increasing at an alarming rate around the world [3]. Indicators such as percentage body fat (PBF), fat mass index (FMI), and fat-free mass index (FFMI) are more stable in obesity than in body mass index (BMI) or body weight indices [4]. Dietary energy density (DED) can be defined as the ED of a total diet. The most commonly used method is to calculate solid foods only, which is believed to better define DED [8,9,10]. In Iran, among various studies, which have examined the role of ED, the only method used for calculating DED has excluded beverages and considers only solid foods [11,12,13,14]. We aimed to investigate the association between the energy density (ED) of diet and body composition components in Iranian adults
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