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Diet quality scores in relation to metabolic risk factors in Japanese adults: a cross-sectional analysis from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Survey, Japan

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Abstract

Objective

Associations between the overall quality of Japanese diets and metabolic risk factors are largely unknown. This cross-sectional study investigated this issue using data from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Survey, Japan.

Methods

Dietary intake was assessed by a 1-day weighed dietary record in 15,618 Japanese adults aged ≥ 20 years. Overall diet quality was assessed by adherence to the Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top (JFG score), its modified version (modified JFG score), the Mediterranean diet score (MDS) and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) score. Metabolic risk factors included BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, total, HDL- and LDL-cholesterol and glycated haemoglobin.

Results

While DASH score was consistently associated with favourable nutrient intake patterns (including higher micronutrient and dietary fibre intakes and lower SFA and sodium intakes), other scores were associated with both favourable and unfavourable aspects (e.g., lower micronutrient intakes for JFG score, higher SFA intakes for modified JFG score and higher sodium intakes for MDS). The associations with metabolic risk factors were also inconsistent and unexpected, including positive associations of JFG and modified JFG scores with LDL-cholesterol, inverse associations of MDS with HDL-cholesterol and null associations of DASH score with blood pressure.

Conclusions

This study did not show expected and consistent associations of the four available diet quality scores with nutrient intakes and metabolic risk factors in Japanese adults. This in turn suggests the need for a scientific base on which to develop an appropriate tool for assessing the quality of diets in the Japanese context.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113 0033, Japan

    Kentaro Murakami

  2. Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health, Ulster University, Coleraine, BT52 1SA, UK

    M. Barbara E. Livingstone

  3. Department of Social and Preventive Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113 0033, Japan

    Satoshi Sasaki

Authors
  1. Kentaro Murakami
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  2. M. Barbara E. Livingstone
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  3. Satoshi Sasaki
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Contributions

KM designed the study, analysed and interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. MBEL and SS helped in the writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kentaro Murakami.

Ethics declarations

Ethical aspects

This survey was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki, and verbal informed consent was obtained from all individual participants. Under the Statistics Act, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare anonymized individual-level data collected from the NHNSJ, and provided the first author with the datasets for this study. In accordance with the Ethical Guidelines of Epidemiological Research established by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, an institutional review board approval was not required for this analysis.

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that there was no conflict of interest.

Financial support

This work was supported in part by the Health and Labour Sciences Research Grant (No. H29-jyunkankitou-ippan-006) from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this article.

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Murakami, K., Livingstone, M.B.E. & Sasaki, S. Diet quality scores in relation to metabolic risk factors in Japanese adults: a cross-sectional analysis from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Survey, Japan. Eur J Nutr 58, 2037–2050 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-018-1762-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-018-1762-6

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