Abstract
To examine trends from 2015 to 2017 in dietary behaviours and diet quality among low-income mothers, teenagers and children. Cross-sectional telephone surveys using a validated 24 h dietary assessment. Randomly sampled households with incomes ≤185 % of the US federal poverty level across California. Survey participants were 13 247 mothers (≥18 years), 3293 teenagers (12-17 years) and 6043 children (5-11 years). Respondents were mostly Latino. Over the 3-year study period, consumption of fruits and vegetables with and without 100 % fruit juice increased (P ≤ 0·05) by at least 0·3 cups/d for mothers, teenagers and children. Intake of water also increased (P ≤ 0·001) by more than 1 cup/d for mothers and children and 2 cups/d for teenagers. Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption was unchanged over the 3 years. Overall diet quality, as assessed by the Healthy Eating Index-2015, improved (P ≤ 0·01) for mothers, teenagers and children. Covariates for the fifteen regression models (three age groups by five outcome variables) included race/ethnicity, age, education for mothers, and gender for teenagers and children. The observed increases in fruit and vegetable intake and improvements in overall diet quality during the 3-year period suggest that low-income Californians may have lowered their risk of preventable diseases. However, more intense or strategic SSB-reduction interventions are required. Regional- or state-level, population-based surveillance of dietary behaviours is useful for public health nutrition policy and programme decision making, and can be used to assess potential trends in future negative health outcomes and related costs associated with poor dietary behaviours within at-risk populations.
Highlights
To assess whether observed trends from the complete sample were an artifact of including responses from individuals from the additional counties, we replicated the analyses and present the regression coefficients for 3-year trends for interviews completed from only those mothers, teenagers and children from the original seventeen counties
To ensure that any changes observed for measures of fruit and vegetable consumption were not overly influenced by intake of 100 % fruit juice, and to provide population-based consumption estimates for comparisons with other studies excluding fruit juice, we examined cups of fruits and vegetables excluding 100 % fruit juice: sum of ASA24 variables F_TOTAL and V_TOTAL only
The five outcome variables examined in the study were selected because they: (i) have been identified in the field of nutrition as main indicators of healthy dietary behaviours; Table 3 Trends in dietary behaviours for mothers, teenagers and children from low-income households, California Family Health Study, 2015 to 2017
Summary
To assess whether observed trends from the complete sample were an artifact of including responses from individuals from the additional counties, we replicated the analyses and present the regression coefficients for 3-year trends for interviews completed from only those mothers, teenagers and children from the original seventeen counties. The objectives of the present study were to examine dietary behaviours and diet quality, over a 3-year period, among mothers, teenagers and children from randomly sampled SNAP-Ed eligible households in California.
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