Takeaway
- Adherence to a greater number of World Health Organization (WHO) dietary recommendations was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality and fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Why this matters
- Findings suggest that motivating and supporting more people to adhere to dietary guidelines may increase healthy life expectancy.
Study design
- A study of 115,051 participants from the UK Biobank who provided ≥2 valid 24-hour dietary assessments.
- Dietary data were obtained from the Oxford WebQ and a brief touchscreen questionnaire.
- Adherence to dietary recommendations was defined based on WHO criteria: ≤10% saturated fats, ≤10% free sugars, ≥25 g/day fibre and ≥5 servings of fruits and vegetables/day.
- Funding: None.
Key results
- Among all participants, only 29.7%, 38.5%, 22.3% and 9.5% met 0, 1, 2 and 3/4 recommendations, respectively.
- Increasing adherence to dietary recommendations was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR; 95% CI):
- 1 recommendation (0.96; 0.91-1.01);
- 2 recommendations (0.91; 0.85-0.97); and
- 3/4 recommendations (0.79; 0.71-0.88; Ptrend<.001).
- No significant association was observed with CVD risk, but the risk of fatal CVD was significantly lower in participants who met 3 or 4 recommendations (HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.61-0.98).
Limitations
- Results were susceptible to measurement error due to self-reporting of dietary intake.
This clinical summary originally appeared on Univadis, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
