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The Use of Healthy Eating Index 2015 and Healthy Beverage Index for Predicting and Modifying Cardiovascular and Renal Outcomes

  • Cardiovascular Disease (JHY Wu, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

With the wide recognition of the importance of dietary patterns rather than isolated nutrient groups on health outcomes, numerous diet quality indices have been designed to evaluate the overall food intake quality in the last two decades.

Recent Findings

The newest version of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), HEI-2015, is a diet quality index that measures adherence to the recommendations of the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. While the key nutrient groups are included in most diet quality indices, differences in other components and the scoring system differentiate HEI. The Healthy Beverage Index (HBI) was recently introduced. Previous literature has confirmed the association of the older versions of HEI with metabolic syndrome, inflammatory markers, and negative health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and all-cause mortality.

Summary

This review presents the existing evidence on the association of HEI-2015 and HBI with health markers and long-term outcome, provides guidance on their use, and identifies persisting challenges such as the development of simple, unified, and objective tools to characterize healthy diets in routine clinical practice.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Koc University School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey

    Lale A. Ertuglu & Atalay Demiray

  2. Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Suleyman Demirel University School of Medicine, Isparta, Turkey

    Baris Afsar

  3. Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, IIS-Fundacion Jimenez Diaz, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Alberto Ortiz

  4. Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Koc University School of Medicine, 34010, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mehmet Kanbay

Authors
  1. Lale A. Ertuglu
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  2. Atalay Demiray
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  3. Baris Afsar
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  4. Alberto Ortiz
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  5. Mehmet Kanbay
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Contributions

Contributed substantially to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work: Lale A. Ertuglu, Atalay Demiray, and Mehmet Kanbay. Drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content: Baris Afsar, Alberto, Ortiz, and Mehmet Kanbay. Approved the final version to be published: Lale A. Ertuglu, Atalay Demiray, Baris Afsar, Alberto Ortiz, and Mehmet Kanbay.

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Correspondence to Mehmet Kanbay.

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Ertuglu, L.A., Demiray, A., Afsar, B. et al. The Use of Healthy Eating Index 2015 and Healthy Beverage Index for Predicting and Modifying Cardiovascular and Renal Outcomes. Curr Nutr Rep 11, 526–535 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-022-00415-2

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