Women’s meal frequency and nutritional and health profiles

Abstract

Objective
To verify whether meal frequency is associated with the nutritional and health profiles of women attending a health-promoting service.

Methods
This cross-sectional study included users of an Academia da Cidade in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais from August 2009 to December 2011. The following were collected: socioeconomic, demographic, health profile, anthropometric, and dietary data. Meal frequency was given by the self-reported number of daily meals and considered appropriate when ≥5. Poisson regression with a robust variance was performed with a significance level of 5% (p<0.05).

Results
The sample consisted of 342 females with a mean age of 50.6±13.7 years and a per capita income of R$ 500.0 (85.0; 4,666.7); 72.5% were adults. They had a median of 4 (1.0; 7.0) meals per day and 52.0% had fewer than five meals a day. Inadequate meal frequency was associated with high blood pressure (PR: 0.71; 95%CI: 0.56, 0.90; p=0.005) and constipation (PR: 0.77; 95%CI: 0.61, 0.98; p=0.040); inappropriate intakes of water (PR: 0.74; 95%CI: 0.59, 0.93; p=0.009), sugar (PR: 0.79; 95%CI: 0.63, 0.98; p=0,036), fruits (PR: 0.79; 95%CI: 0.63, 0.98; p=0.036), and non-starchy vegetables (PR: 0.74; 95%CI: 0.59, 0.94; p=0.012); and preference for whole milk (PR: 0.72; 95%CI: 0.57, 0.89; p=0.003).

Conclusion
Inadequate daily meal frequency was associated with worse nutritional and health profiles, highlighting the importance of pertinent nutrition intervention.