Associations between diet quality scores and cardiometabolic status in young Japanese women: A cross-sectional study.

Background and objectives: This cross-sectional study aimed to examine associations between diet quality scores and adverse cardiometabolic status in young Japanese women.

Methods and study design: In total, 1084 female dietetics students aged 18-22 years completed a validated self-administered diet history questionnaire. Diet quality was assessed using the Diet Quality Score for Japanese (DQSJ), Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), Alternate Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010), Alternate Mediterranean Diet score (AMED), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension score (DASH), and Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top score (JFGST). Adverse cardiometabolic status was defined as the highest quartile of the sum of z scores for waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (multiplied by -1), triacylglycerol, glucose, and insulin.

Results: After adjustment for potential confounding factors, adverse cardiometabolic status was significantly associated with all the diet quality scores except for AMED, with adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence interval) in the highest quartile compared with the lowest of 0.39 (0.25-0.61) for DQSJ, 0.40 (0.26-0.61) for DASH, 0.44 (0.30-0.66) for AHEI-2010, 0.59 (0.39-0.88) for HEI-2015, 0.67 (0.45-0.99) for JFGST, and 0.80 (0.54-1.18) for AMED. Associations with each of the cardiometabolic risk factors were most prominent for AHEI-2010 (significant associations with all factors except triacylglycerol), followed by DQSJ (significant associations with all factors except triacylglycerol and glucose).

Conclusions: This cross-sectional study of young Japanese women showed associations between several diet quality scores and cardiometabolic status. These associations should be confirmed in other populations, prospectively where possible.