Healthy dietary food patterns associated with reduced levels of markers linked to the metabolic syndrome

During 2001 to 2002, a total of 1514 men and 1528 women from the Attica region in Greece were enrolled in this study aimed to evaluate the associations between food patterns and the characteristics of the metabolic syndrome. Principal component analysis, a method deriving a set of independent linear combinations from a set of foods/food groups that retains as much of the information of original dietary habits, was applied to extract dietary patterns from 22 food groups and the associations between the extracted dietary patterns and characteristics of the metabolic syndrome were evaluated using multivariate regression analysis. Component 1 was characterized by the consumption of cereals, fish, legumes, vegetables, and fruits, component 2 by the intake of potatoes and meat, component 6 by the intake of alcohol, and the other components by the consumption of dairy and sweets. After adjusting for various confounders, components 2 and 6 were positively correlated with waist circumference, systolic blood pressure, triglycerides, and with the likelihood of having the metabolic syndrome whereas component 1 was inversely correlated with the previous indexes, and with a lesser likelihood of having the metabolic syndrome. Thus a healthy dietary pattern was independently associated with reduced levels of markers linked to the metabolic syndrome, whereas meat and alcohol intake showed the opposite results.

Abstract

Keywords:
Blood pressure – Diet – HDL-cholesterol – Metabolic syndrome – Plasma glucose – Triglycerides – Waist circumference