The Dietary Variety Score: Assessing Diet Quality in Healthy Young and Older Adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-8223(97)00070-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective To develop a new dietary variety score (DVS) and link it to other measures of diet quality, including a modified diet quality index (DQI).

Subjects The subjects were 24 healthy young (ages 20 to 30 years) and 24 healthy older (ages 60 to 75 years) adults, including 24 men and 24 women. Their dietary intake assessments were based on one 24-hour food recall interview and 14 consecutive days of food records.

Design and measures Energy and nutrient intakes were estimated using Nutritionist IV software. DVS was based on the cumulative number of different foods consumed over the 15-day period. DQI was a 5-potnt scale based on conformity with the key US dietary recommendations. Full score was awarded for diets deriving 30% or less of energy from fat, 10% or less of energy from saturated fat, more than 50% of energy from carbohydrate, and containing less than 300 mg cholesterol and 2,400 mg sodium per day. Analytic measures included analyses of variance, correlation analyses, and χ2 tests.

Results Older subjects consumed more varied diets than did young subjects. Higher DVS values were linked positively to vitamin C intakes and negatively to the consumption of salt, sugar, and saturated fat. However, a high DVS was not linked to a high score on the DQI in this subject sample. Discussion/conclusions Few studies have addressed the issue of how many different foods constitute a varied diet. The present classification scheme offers a new way of assessing dietary variety at the individual or group level. Measures of dietary variety may represent an additional facet of diet quality and their relationship to selected health outcomes should be examined further. J Am Diet Assoc. 1997;97:266–271.

Section snippets

Subjects

Subjects were 24 young (ages 20 to 30 years) and 24 older (ages 60 to 75 years) adults, including 24 men and 24 women, recruited by advertising in the Ann Arbor, Mich, community. The subjects were independently living normal-weight non-smokers in good physical and mental health. Residents of group housing, including student residences and retirement homes, were ineligible for the study.

All subjects were weighed and measured. Measures of body fat were obtained using triceps skinfold measurements

Subject Characteristics

Subject characteristics are summarized in Table 1. Older subjects were both heavier and had more body fat than young subjects, although not always significantly so. Subjects were normotensive, with the exception of 5 older women with mild hypertension. However, the increase in blood pressure with age was not statistically significant. The majority of the subjects were white, college educated, and physically and socially active. On the average, subjects had 16 years of formal schooling and 98%

Discussion

Dietary intake assessments have traditionally focused on energy intakes and on the nutrient composition of the diet (21) rather than on the variety of dietary choices or the patterns of food selection. However, food-based analyses of the total diet are assuming an increasingly prominent place in nutrition research (6), (10). Studies have focused on the contribution of dietary diversity (5), diet quality (7), and dietary variety (8) to the quality of the total diet and to selected health

Conclusions

Developing new indexes of overall diet quality has become a priority area in nutrition research. The variety of food choices, as measured by the new DVS, may provide an additional useful measure of diet quality. Dietary variety need not decline as a function of age. Our study showed that healthy older adults can have more diverse diets than young people. However, at this time, there are few data regarding the variety of food choices among children, adolescents, the poor, or among other

References (29)

  • A.K. Kant et al.

    Dietary diversity and subsequent mortality in the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Follow-up Study

    Am J Clin Nutr.

    (1993)
  • M.A. Davis et al.

    Living arrangements and dietary quality of older U.S. adults

    J Am Diet Assoc.

    (1990)
  • M.L. Grotkowski et al.

    Nutritional knowledge, attitudes, and dietary practices of the elderly

    J Am Diet Assoc.

    (1978)

  • Nutrition and Your HealthDietary Guidelines for Americans

    (1995)

    • Cited by (0)

    View full text
    Copyright © 1997 American Dietetic Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.