Association between Mean Adequacy Ratio as diet quality index and anthropometric indices in children and adolescents

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Diet quality indices are an approach to estimate entire diet quality. This study aims to determine the association between Mean Adequacy Ratio (MAR) as a diet quality indicator and anthropometric indices in children and adolescents. METHODS: This is a nationwide cross-sectional study. In the present study, 5000 students randomly were selected for filling the food frequency questionnaire. Multivariate linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between MAR with anthropometric measures - Z score. RESULTS: Data of 4323 children and adolescents aged 6-18 years old were available for the present study. In total, 52.5 of them were boys. The mean (standard deviation) ages were 11.2 (3.2) and 11.5 (3.1) years for boys and girls, respectively. Result of multivariate regression analysis showed that MAR was positively associated with waist circumference-Z score and BMI-Z score (beta = 0.399, P < 0.001; beta = 0.291, P = 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: We found a positive association between waist circumference-Z score and BMI-Z score with MAR.