Healthier diet may improve fitness: Study

A healthy diet is associated with greater physical fitness in middle-aged adults, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

The study included 2,380 individuals in the Framingham Heart Study. The average age was 54 years and 54% were women. Participants underwent a maximum effort cardiopulmonary exercise test on a cycle ergometer to measure peak VO2.Participants also completed the Harvard semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire to assess intake of 126 dietary items during the last year ranging from never or less than once per month to six or more servings per day.

The researchers evaluated the association between diet quality and fitness after controlling for other factors that could influence the relationship, including age, sex, total daily energy intake, body mass index, smoking status, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, diabetes and routine physical activity level. The average Alternative Healthy Eating Index and Mediterranean-style Diet Score were 66.7 and 12.4, respectively. Compared with the average score, an increase of 13 points on the AHEI and 4.7 on the MDS was associated with a 5.2% and 4.5% greater peak VO2, respectively.3

To discover the potential mechanism linking diet and fitness, the researchers performed further analyses. They examined the relationship between diet quality, fitness and metabolites, which are substances produced during digestion and released into the blood during exercise. A total of 201 metabolites (e.g. amino acids) were measured in blood samples collected in a subset of 1,154 study participants. Some 24 metabolites were associated with either poor diet and fitness, or with favourable diet and fitness, after adjusting for the same factors considered in the previous analyses.

Reference:

Dr. Michael Mi et al,JOURNAL European Journal of Preventive Cardiology