Poor Diet in Adolescence Tied to Cardiometabolic Risk Factors

THURSDAY, Dec. 21, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. teens with poor diet quality have cardiometabolic risk factors, according to a research brief published in the December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

Kathy Hu, from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and colleagues examined the prospective association among diet with adolescent cardiometabolic risk and anthropometrics over two years. The analysis included 192 adolescents (aged 10 to 16 years) participating in the Translational Investigation of Growth and Everyday Routine in Kids cohort.

The researchers found that baseline Healthy Eating Index-2015 scores were inversely associated with follow-up total cardiometabolic risk z-score, homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance, waist circumference z-score, body mass index percentile, fat mass, lean mass, and visceral adipose tissue mass.

"Promotion of nutrition knowledge is necessary, but knowledge is not consistently linked with food consumption behavior," senior author Amanda E. Staiano, Ph.D., also from Louisiana State University, said in a statement. "Identifying barriers to consuming a healthful diet and investigating effective strategies to overcome these barriers may curtail future health risks."

Abstract/Full Text