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Eating pattern and psychological symptoms: A cross-sectional study based on a national large sample of Chinese adolescents
This 2019 study investigated the relationship between dietary patterns and mental health in Chinese adolescents, by administering the Multi-dimensional Sub-health Questionnaire of Adolescents (MSQA) to assess emotional, conduct and social adaptation problems, and by collecting data on eating pattern using the semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (SQFFQ). Among 32 Chinese schools across 4 provinces, a total of 14,500 adolescents (in grade 7-12) completed eligible questionnaires. Four main patterns were identified: healthy, meat, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and fast foods patterns. The healthy pattern was associated with lower risk of psychological symptoms [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.59, 0.6, 0.62, 0.53, all p<0.01), while the the fast foods pattern (aOR = 2.16, 2.04, 1.84, 2.24, respectively, all p < 0.01), the SSBs pattern (aOR = 1.38, 1.34, 1.25, 1.56, respectively, all p < 0.01) and the meats pattern (aOR = 1.24, 1.15, 1.12, 1.28, respectively, all p < 0.05) were significantly related with increased incidence of psychological symptoms. Dose-response relationships were observed for all dietary patterns with psychological symptoms, except for meat eating patterns. The limitation of this study was that SQFFQ made it difficult to determine the accurate consumption of foods, while Xu et al. (2019) even admitted that they could not infer causality because of the cross-sectional design. Nevertheless, this study emphasized the importance of eating patterns during adolescence in the context of mental health. [NPID: depression, anxiety, mental health, China, healthy, meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, fast food, adolescence]
Year: 2019
