Health in Spanish older people: Dietary habits, lifestyles and related socioeconomic factors.

OBJECTIVE

To measure diet quality in the population aged over 65 years in Spain and its autonomous communities and to identify sociodemographic, health and lifestyle factors related to diet quality based on 2017 Spanish National Health Survey.

METHODS

To estimate diet quality, we used the Healthy Eating Index for Spanish Population (IASE). A multiple linear regression analysis (regression coefficients and 95 % CIs) was used to determine the relationship between socio-demographic, health and lifestyle factors and IASE. This index was our dependent variable and as independent variables: sex, chronic diseases, age, level of education, engagement in physical activity, marital status and Body Mass Index.

RESULTS

A total of 6325 participants were included in the sample. The diet quality rating in Spain revealed that 0.46 % of our population had an unhealthy diet, 87 % needed to make changes, and 12.3 % were following a healthy diet. Being female (Regression coefficient = 1.6, 95 % CI = 1.14;-1.97), being physically active several times a month (Regression coefficient = 1.6, 95 % CI =0.63-2.48) and several times a week (Regression coefficient = 2.2, 95 % CI =1.36-3.10), having chronic disease (Regression coefficients =0.7, 95 % CI =0.08-1.29), being overweight (Regression coefficient = 0.5, 95 % CI =0.06-0.95) and being aged between 70 and 74 (Regression coefficient = 0.5, 95 % CI =0.01-1.07) and 75-79 (Regression coefficient = 0.9, 95 % CI =0.33-1.50) were associated with higher IASE scores.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

These results help to identify risk groups or situations and to design health prevention programs.