Review Article
Year: 2019 | Month: June | Volume: 9 | Issue: 6 | Pages: 378-384
Does Measuring Diet Quality Help in Predicting Health Outcomes?
Srishti Mediratta1, Dr. Pulkit Mathur2
1Ph.D. Scholar, University of Delhi, India
2Assistant Professor, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110001.
Corresponding Author: Srishti Mediratta
ABSTRACT
Measures of diet quality help to assess dietary risk factors for non-communicable diseases in nutritional epidemiology. This paper is a review of the methods used across the world to assess diet quality and their use in predicting health outcomes. In most studies on disease prevention importance has been given to the role of individual nutrients or food groups. In a day people eat a combination of food items and not individual foods in isolation. Although several diet quality indices have been developed, there is no universal diet quality index in use. Most indices adhere to national dietary guidelines. Scores in the diet quality indices have been correlated with cancer, coronary heart disease and other cardio-vascular diseases. Data from longitudinal studies provide better insights. The limitations of such studies are the short time duration to show a cause effect relation between diet quality and health outcomes.
Key words: diet quality, diet variety, dietary scores, dietary indices, health outcomes