An index to measure the association between dietary patterns and coronary heart disease risk factors: findings from two Italian studies.

Background: To examine the association between established coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors and eating patterns by creating a dietary index utilizing a limited amount of food frequency questionnaire data on specified indicator foods.

Methods: Selected data from the Italian Risk Factors and Life Expectancy (RIFLE) project collected between 1978-1979 and 1983-1984 on 7665 men and women, aged 20-59 years, were used to compute a dietary index summarizing the relative proportion of fatty to non-fatty foods. The association between this index and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP), body mass index, total serum cholesterol (TC), and blood glucose, controlling for potential confounders was then tested using multiple linear regression.

Results: Among men, a positive association was found between the index and all five CHD risk factors (P < 0.01). Among women, the associations were weaker, becoming statistically significant only for TC and glucose.

Conclusions: Our food index was able to detect relationships between diet and traditional CHD risk factors. A tool such as this, which requires only a limited number of key indicator food items, might enhance the use of existing food frequency questionnaires and also streamline the process of collecting new dietary information.