Adherence to dietary guidelines and mortality: a report from prospective cohort studies of 134,000 Chinese adults in urban Shanghai

doi:10.3945/ajcn.113.079194

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Volume 100, Issue 2, August 2014, Pages 693-700

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ABSTRACT

Background:

A higher adherence to dietary recommendations, such as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), has been associated with lower morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases in Western populations. However, the health benefits of following the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese remain unknown.

Objective:

We examined adherence to the Chinese Food Pagoda (CHFP) in association with total and cause-specific mortality and compared associations with those of the DASH and AHEI.

Design:

Participants included 61,239 men and 73,216 women (aged 40–74 y) from 2 population-based prospective studies in Shanghai, China. Habitual dietary intakes were assessed at baseline in-person interviews by using validated food-frequency questionnaires. Deaths and underlying causes were identified through the Shanghai Vital Statistics Registry and follow-up home visits.

Results:

We documented 2954 deaths in men and 4348 deaths in women during mean follow-ups of 6.5 and 12.0 y, respectively. A higher CHFP score was associated with lower total mortality with multivariable-adjusted HRs of 0.67 (95% CI: 0.60, 0.75) in men and 0.87 (95% CI: 0.80, 0.95) in women when extreme quartiles were compared (both P-trend < 0.005). Decreased risks associated with a higher CHFP score were observed for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes mortality, particularly in men. A significantly lower total mortality was shown for adherence to specific recommendations on vegetables, fruit, legumes, fish, and eggs but not grains, dairy, meat, fat, and salt. A higher DASH score and AHEI also predicted lower mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes but not cancer.

Conclusions:

A greater compliance with Chinese or US dietary guidelines is associated with lower total mortality in Chinese adults. Favorable associations are more evident in men than women and more consistent for cardiometabolic mortality than cancer mortality.

Cited by (0)

^¹: From the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN (DY, XZ, GY, WZ and X-OS), and the Department of Epidemiology, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Shanghai, China (Y-BX, HL, and Y-TG).

^²: Funding sources were not involved in the data collection, data analysis, manuscript writing, or publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

^³: Supported by the NIH (grants R37 CA070867, UM1 CA173640, and R01 HL095931).

^⁴: Address correspondence to X Zhang, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Institute for Medicine and Public Health, 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 600, Nashville, TN 37203. E-mail: [email protected].

^⁵: Abbreviations used: AHEI, Alternative Healthy Eating Index; CHFP, Chinese Food Pagoda; CVD, cardiovascular disease; DASH, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension; FFQ, food-frequency questionnaire; SMHS, Shanghai Men’s Health Study; SWHS, Shanghai Women’s Health Study.