Relationship between dietary variety, adequacy, moderation, and balanced diet and cardiovascular risk factors

The relationship between dietary variety, adequacy, moderation, and balanced diet as diet quality indices and cardiovascular risk factors has not been yet evaluated amongst patients with Mmyocardial Iinfarction (MI).

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 225 males and 93 females with MI who were admitted in two heart hospitals, Shiraz, Iran from November 2019 to April 2020. Dietary intake was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire and the Diet Quality Index-International (DQI-I). DQI-I included four subscales, namely variety (20 scores), adequacy (40 scores), moderation (30 scores), and balanced diet (10 scores).

The mean age of the participants was 54 ± 8 years. The mean scores of total DQI-I and variety, adequacy, moderation, and balanced diet subscales were 58 ± 12.2, 12.7 ± 3.8, 28.5 ± 7.0, 9.88 ± 5.6, and 7.8 ± 1.1, respectively. The results showed that waist circumference (WC) was influenced by adequacy (-0.26 ± 0.04) and moderation (-0.28 ± 0.03) subscales, while body mass index (BMI)was only related to the moderation subscale (0.15 ± 0.07). Additionally, low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol was influenced by variety (-0.18 ± 0.01), adequacy (-0.14 ± 0.02), moderation (-0.2 ± 0.02), and balanced diet (-0.2 ± 0.003) subscales, while total cholesterol was associated with the adequacy subscale (-0.18 ± 0.01). In addition, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol was related to variety (0.16 ± 0.03), moderation (0.14 ± 0.04), and balanced diet (0.13 ± 0.01) subscales,while triglyceride was only influenced by the variety subscale (-0.15 ± 0.004).

Dietary advice based on variety, adequacy, moderation, and balanced diet could be useful in practice to provide personalized messages to improve the risk factors amongst patients with MI.