Association Between Health Perception and Diet Quality in a Sample of Hispanics
Other Scholarly Work
Alcivar, Jair, Palacios, Cristina, Mijares, Vanessa. (2020). Association Between Health Perception and Diet Quality in a Sample of Hispanics
. 4(Suppl 2), 154-154.
Alcivar, Jair, Palacios, Cristina, Mijares, Vanessa. (2020). Association Between Health Perception and Diet Quality in a Sample of Hispanics
. 4(Suppl 2), 154-154.
This study was conducted to evaluate how health perception is associated with diet quality among Hispanics living in South Florida.
Methods
The research design was a cross-sectional study with a total of 109 people recruited at the end of their grocery event in local supermarkets around the Miami-Dade County area. They were asked to complete a questionnaire and to provide a picture of their grocery receipt. We included only adults ≥18 years and the primary food provider of the household conducting a primary shopping event for the week. Health perception was assessed from a question used in NHANES (Would you say your health in general is…with the following options ‘Excellent’, ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Fair’ and ‘Poor’). Diet quality was evaluated using the Grocery Purchase Quality Index 2016 (GPQI-2016) from the grocery receipt. The GPQI-2016 is based on the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)– 2010 and has a total of 31 categories, 29 of those coming from the USDA Food Plan Market Baskets and 2 added by the authors of the GPQI-2016. These are mapped into 11 different components, which are re-grouped into ‘Adequacy’ and ‘Moderation’. Each component can have a maximum score of 5 or 10 with a total maximum score of 75 when all 11 components scores are added up. An analysis of covariance was used to compare GPQI-2016 by health perception which was categorized into three groups: Excellent/Very Good, Good, and Fair/Poor, adjusting for age and gender.
Results
The mean age of individuals was 45.1 ± 13.5 years, 74% were female, 77% were Hispanics, and 36.7% perceived themselves as having ‘Good’ health. The total average GPQI-2016 score was 40.9 ± 1.0, which is below the maximum score of 75 by almost 50%. Green and Beans Scores were lower among those with ‘Good’ perceived health and higher amongst those with ‘Fair/Poor’ perceived health (P < 0.05). The other individual component scores or the total GPQI-2016 score did not differ by health perception.
Conclusions
The diet quality score could be considered somewhat poor or regular. Only the Greens and Beans score differed by groups, with a higher score amongst those with ‘Fair/Poor’ perceived health group. Because health perception is subjective, other objective markers of health may be needed to detect differences in diet quality by health status.
