Sub-patterns of food consumption and hyperglycemia in Mexican young people: a study by factor analysis.

Background: The student population that is admitted to the University Juarez of Tabasco has poor healthy eating habits. Fasting glucose ≥5.6 mmol/L was found in 10% of the students.

Objective: We wanted to identify the sub-pattern of their eating habits that could explain the hyperglycemia.

Design: A questionnaire on the feeding habits was applied to 3,559 first-year students, who were subjected to a blood analysis to determine biochemical markers in 2011. Based on the obtained questionnaire data, the factorial analysis was used for the statistical analysis. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure for sampling adequacy was used for validation. To determine eating habits, Varimax normalization with Kaiser was used.

Results: The number of students with euglycemia was 3,138, including 366 with values for prediabetes, and 55 with values for diabetes. After normalization using Varimax rotation with Kaiser, component 1 of participants with euglycemia included eight foods. The number of foods in component 1 of those participants with prediabetes was seven, and it diminished to four in those with fasting glucose >7 mmol/L.

Conclusions: It was found that glucose levels increase in direct relation to the diminution in the number of selected foods.