Evaluating Nutrient Intake of Career Firefighters Compared to Military Dietary Reference Intakes

Abstract

The primary goals of the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) are to plan and assess nutrient intakes to promote health, reduce chronic disease, and prevent toxicity. Firefighters have unique nutrient needs compared to the public due to their job demands. The military provides the only published guidance for tactical athletes’ nutrient needs. The purpose of this study was to determine whether firefighters were meeting the Military Dietary Reference Intakes (MDRI). A cross-sectional study was conducted in a sample of career firefighters (n = 150, 37.4 ± 8.4 year-old males) employed in Southern California. Data were gathered during baseline assessments from a Federal Emergency Management Agency-funded Firefighter Wellness Initiative. Participants were asked to log their food and beverage consumption over a 72-h period. Descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, 95% confidence intervals) were calculated for all participant characteristics and average three-day nutrient intakes. A 95% confidence interval compared their nutrient intake to MDRI to identify differences in nutrient intakes, significance accepted at p = 0.05. Compared to MDRI reference values, firefighters consumed an inadequate amount of total calories, linolenic and alpha-linolenic fatty acid, fiber, vitamins D, E, and K, potassium, magnesium, zinc, and carbohydrates. Vitamin D, magnesium, and potassium had the greatest shortcomings (95.3%, 94.0%, and 98.7%, respectively, under MRDA). Thus, firefighters are not meeting the established MDRI for several key nutrients required to promote health, improve performance, and reduce chronic disease. Dietitians and health care providers may use the results of this study to help design health promotion programs for this population. Future research should develop a customized reference intake for firefighters.

Mortality among Fire Department of the City of New York Rescue and Recovery Workers Exposed to the World Trade Center Disaster, 2001–2017

“…Limitations of our study, in addition to the healthy worker effect, included a lack of information about certain lifestyle factors for the reference population, such as dietary intake, which some studies suggest differs between those in the fire service and the general population [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Our cohort also contained relatively few women and non-white rescue/recovery workers compared with the general population.…”

Free-Living Dietary Intake in Tactical Personnel and Implications for Nutrition Practice: A Systematic Review

“…All included studies were published between 1990 and 2020. They involved military personnel (n = 16) [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57], law enforcement personnel (n = 4) [26,[58][59][60], or firefighters (n = 2) [61,62], and were from a…”

“…All included studies were published between 1990 and 2020. They involved military personnel (n = 16) [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57], law enforcement personnel (n = 4) [26,[58][59][60], or firefighters (n = 2) [61,62], and were from a range of countries, including the United States of America (USA) (n = 9) [26,[42][43][44][50][51][52]54,62], Israel (n = 3) [46,47,57], the United Kingdom (UK) (n = 2) [53,59], Italy [55], Belgium [48], Brazil [58], Canada [60], Cameroon [49], Thailand [45], Iran [56], and Australia [61] (n = 1). Most studies reported both male and female data [26,46,47,…”

“…The mean age of participants in the included studies ranged from 19 (±1) to 43 (±7) years (Table 2). BMI was reported in 16 studies [45][46][47][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62], was able to be calculated in three studies [42][43][44], and was not re-ported or able to be calculated in three studies [26,48,49]. Available BMI data for females ranged from 23 (±3) to 26 (±5) kg/m 2 and males ranged from 22 (±4) to 30 (±3) kg/m 2 (Table 2).…”

Estimating Total Energy Expenditure for Fire-Fighters during Large Scale Disaster Response Training Using a Tri-Axial Accelerometer

“…The same research also noted that the fire department needed other technical information such as the energy requirements of fire-fighters, which has a role in preparing the appropriate food [ 4 ]. With regards to the energy intake, it was reported that the fire-fighters consumed an inadequate amount of total calories, including some nutrients, compared to a military dietary reference intake [ 5 ]. These studies also led us to question and find out how much energy is consumed in the actual activity for the preparation during an actual disaster.…”