Dietary patterns of school-age children in Scotland: association with socio-economic indicators, physical activity and obesity

Abstract

The Survey of Sugar Intake among Children in Scotland was carried out in May to September 2006. The present study aimed to identify dietary patterns in school-aged children from the survey and investigate associations with socio-economic factors, obesity and physical activity. Habitual diet was assessed using the Scottish Collaborative Group FFQ. Height and weight were measured by trained fieldworkers. A total of 1233 FFQ were available for analysis. Dietary patterns were identified by age (5 -11 and 12-17 years) and sex using principal components analysis. Associations between factor scores and socio-economic status, education level of the main food provider, physical activity levels and BMI category (based on UK 1990 charts) were examined. Three dietary patterns were identified in each age and sex group. 'Healthier' patterns loading highly for fruit and vegetables were significantly associated with higher socio-economic status and higher education levels of the main food provider whereas more 'unhealthy' patterns ('snacks' and 'puddings') were associated with lower socio-economic status and lower education levels of the main food provider. There was no consistent association between dietary patterns and BMI group or time spent in physical activity. However, inactivity (screen time) was inversely associated with 'healthier' patterns in all age and sex groups and positively associated with 'puddings' and 'snacks' in girls aged 5 -11 years. Clear dietary patterns can be identified in school-age children in Scotland, which are consistently related to socio-economic factors and inactivity. This has implications for targeting health promotion at subgroups in terms of lifestyle changes required.Dietary patterns: Principal components analysis: Children: Inactivity: Overweight Traditionally research on diet and health has focused on intakes of individual nutrients and/or foods or food groups. However, diet is complex and intake of individual nutrients or foods is not independent of intakes of other nutrients or foods. More recently a number of statistical methods have been used to identify patterns of dietary behaviour. The most popular of these is principal components analysis (PCA) (1) , a data-driven method which identifies foods that are frequently eaten together by aggregating items based on the degree to which the amounts consumed are correlated with one another. The aim of PCA is to identify groups of food that account for the largest amount of variation in overall diet between individuals. This method has been mainly used in studies of diet in adult populations but has also been used previously to explore dietary patterns in British, Spanish, Australian, Korean and Finnish children (2 -11) .In 2005, the Food Standards Agency Scotland commissioned the 'Survey of Sugar Intake among Children in Scotland' (12) to provide information on the diet of children in Scotland, with a particular focus on the intake of non-milk extrinsic sugars and sugar-containing foods. The aims of the present study were to identify diet...

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