Department of Gastroenterology, Alfred Health, 99 Commercial Rd, Melbourne 3004, Australia.
School of Translational Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne 3004, Australia.
Nutrients. 2024 Sep 3;16(17):2978. doi: 10.3390/nu16172978.
Dietary patterns contribute to overall health and diseases of ageing but are understudied in older adults. As such, we first aimed to develop dietary indices to quantify Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) utilisation and Ultra-processed Food (UPF) intake in a well-characterised cohort of relatively healthy community-dwelling older Australian adults. Second, we aimed to understand the relationship between these scores and the association of these scores with prevalent cardiometabolic disease and frailty. Our major findings are that in this population of older adults, (a) pre-frailty and frailty are associated with reduced MDS and increased UPF intake; (b) adherence to MDS eating patterns does not preclude relatively high intake of UPF (and vice versa); and (c) high utilisation of an MDS eating pattern does not prevent an increased risk of frailty with higher UPF intakes. As such, the Mediterranean Diet pattern should be encouraged in older adults to potentially reduce the risk of frailty, while the impact of UPF intake should be further explored given the convenience these foods provide to a population whose access to unprocessed food may be limited due to socioeconomic, health, and lifestyle factors.
饮食模式有助于整体健康和衰老相关疾病，但在老年人中研究不足。因此，我们首先旨在为特征明确的相对健康的澳大利亚社区居住的老年成年人队列制定饮食指数，以量化地中海饮食评分（MDS）的利用和超加工食品（UPF）的摄入量。其次，我们旨在了解这些评分之间的关系，以及这些评分与普遍存在的心血管代谢疾病和虚弱之间的关联。我们的主要发现是，在这一老年人群中，（a）衰弱前期和衰弱与 MDS 的减少和 UPF 摄入量的增加有关；（b）MDS 饮食模式的坚持并不排除相对较高的 UPF 摄入量（反之亦然）；（c）MDS 饮食模式的高利用率并不能预防随着 UPF 摄入量的增加而导致的虚弱风险增加。因此，应鼓励老年人采用地中海饮食模式，以降低虚弱的风险，同时鉴于这些食物为因社会经济、健康和生活方式因素而可能难以获得未加工食品的人群提供了便利，应进一步探讨 UPF 摄入量的影响。
