Association between diet quality and obesity indicators among the working-age adults in Inner Mongolia, Northern China: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Obesity is a major risk factor for the global burden of disease in countries that are economically developed or not. This study aimed to investigate the association between diet quality and obesity indicators applying DASH and aMed.

Methods: This cross-sectional study on adult nutrition and chronic disease in Inner Mongolia (n = 1320). Dietary data were collected using 24-h diet recall for 3 consecutive days and weighing method. DASH and aMed were used to assess the dietary quality. WC, BMI and WC-BMI were used as obesity indicators. Logistic regression models were used to examine the associations between diet quality and obesity indicators.

Results: Higher diet quality, assessed by DASH, was only associated with WC. The odds ratio (OR) for abdominal obesity in the highest tertile of DASH scores compared with the lowest was 0.71 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.53, 0.96; P = 0.03). Furthermore, aMed was inversely associated with obesity indicators. OR for abdominal obesity in the highest tertile of aMed score compared with the lowest were 0.63 (95% CI 0.47, 0.87; P = 0.005) and 0.57 (95% CI 0.41, 0.77; P = 0.02) for overweight and obesity, respectively, and 0.60 (95% CI 0.44, 0.81; P = 0.02) for high obesity risk.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that dietary quality assessed using aMed is more closely associated with obesity than assessment using DASH in working-age adults in Inner Mongolia. The Mediterranean diet can be recommended as a healthy diet to control weight.