DIETARY PATTERNS AND THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH OBESITY: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Context. Scarce data on dietary habits in Eastern European countries is available and reports investigated individual food items and not dietary patterns in these populations Objective. To identify dietary patterns and to explore their association with obesity in a sample from Romanian population. Design. Cross-sectional. Subjects and Methods. This was an analysis of data collected from 1398 adult participants in ORO study. Data on lifestyle, eating habits and food frequency consumption were collected. Results. By principal component analysis we identified 3 dietary patterns explaining 31.4% of the diet variation: High meat/High fat pattern, Western pattern and Prudent pattern. High meat/High fat pattern was associated with male gender, lower educational level, living in a rural, smoking and a higher probability for the presence of obesity (OR 1.2 [95%CI: 1.1-1.4]). Western pattern was associated with younger age, a higher level of physical activity and smoking. Prudent pattern was associated with older age, female gender, a higher level of physical activity, not smoking status and a lower probability for the presence of obesity (OR 0.8 [95%CI: 0.7-0.9]). Conclusions. This study provides for the first-time information on the association between dietary patterns in adults from an Eastern European country and the presence of obesity.