Socioeconomic and Geographic Factors linked to Diet Quality?

For decades, numerous health organizations have published guidelines on healthy diet and lifestyle for prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases. A body of evidence suggests that greater dietary and behavioral concordance with the these guidelines is associated with significantly lower mortality from cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and all causes, including among people from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups and individuals with limited resources.

For the same reason, a recent study published in the JAMA Network Open pointed out a question- Are social, economic, and geographic factors independently associated with diet quality? The study included a cross-sectional analysis of over 1.5 lac adults participants who all completed a validated food frequency questionnaire after which data was analyzed.

Poor diet quality was defined as lowest quartile of dietary concordance with the 2020 American Cancer Society recommendations for cancer prevention score, based on sex-specific intake categories of vegetables and legumes, whole fruits, whole grains, red and processed meat, highly processed foods and refined grains, and sugar-sweetened beverages.

The results of the study showed among the total participants 79.3% were women. Among the others were the American Indian or Alaskan Native individuals, Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander individuals, Black, Hispanic and White individuals.

It was found that when compared with White participants, Black participants had a 16% higher risk of poor diet quality, while Hispanic/Latino had 16% lower risk and Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander participants had 33% lower risk of poor diet quality.

After controlling for other characteristics, rural residence was associated with a higher risk of poor diet quality, and living in a food desert was associated with a 17% higher risk. Associations of income with diet quality and education with diet quality varied by race and ethnicity.

Hence ,the authors concluded that multiple individual-level socioeconomic and geographic variables were independently associated with poor diet quality.so the authors sent out a message saying that These factors could be targeted for improved messaging, behavioral interventions, programs, and policies for everyone to have an equal opportunity to eat a healthy diet.

Reference: McCullough ML, Chantaprasopsuk S, Islami F, et al. Association of Socioeconomic and Geographic Factors With Diet Quality in US Adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(6):e2216406;doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.16406.