A 14-Item Mediterranean Diet Assessment Tool and Obesity Indexes among High-Risk Subjects: The PREDIMED Trial

TLDR: A brief 14-item tool was able to capture a strong monotonic inverse association between adherence to a good quality dietary pattern (Mediterranean diet) and obesity indexes in a population of adults at high cardiovascular risk.

Abstract: Objective: Independently of total caloric intake, a better quality of the diet (for example, conformity to the Mediterranean diet) is associated with lower obesity risk. It is unclear whether a brief dietary assessment tool, instead of full-length comprehensive methods, can also capture this association. In addition to reduced costs, a brief tool has the interesting advantage of allowing immediate feedback to participants in interventional studies. Another relevant question is which individual items of such a brief tool are responsible for this association. We examined these associations using a 14-item tool of adherence to the Mediterranean diet as exposure and body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) as outcomes.