Dietary patterns of adults living in Ouagadougou and their association with overweight

Abstract

Background: Urbanization in developing countries comes along with changes in food habits and living conditions and with an increase in overweight and associated health risks. The objective of the study was to describe dietary patterns of adults in Ouagadougou and to study their relationship with anthropometric status of the subjects.

Methods: A qualitative food frequency questionnaire was administered to 1,072 adults living in two contrasted districts of Ouagadougou. Dietary patterns were defined by principal component analysis and described by multivariate analysis. Logistic regression was used to study their association with overweight.

Results: The diet was mainly made of cereals, vegetables and fats from vegetable sources. The two first components of the principal component analysis were interpreted respectively as a "snacking" score and as a "modern foods" score. Both scores were positively and independently associated with the economic level of households and with food expenditures (p <or= 0.001 for both). The "snacking" score was higher for younger people (p = 0.004), for people having a formal occupation (p = 0.006), for those never married (p = 0.005), whereas the "modern foods" score was associated with ethnic group (p = 0.032) and district of residence (p < 0.001). Thirty-six percent of women and 14.5% of men were overweight (Body Mass Index > 25 kg/m2). A higher "modern foods" score was associated with a higher prevalence of overweight when confounding factors were accounted for (OR = 1.19 [95% CI 1.03-1.36]) but there was no relationship between overweight and the "snacking" score.

Conclusions: Modernisation of types of foods consumed was associated with the living conditions and the environment and with an increased risk of overweight. This should be accounted for to promote better nutrition and prevent non communicable diseases.

Figure 1

Mean weekly frequency of consumption of the 22 food sub-groups.

Figure 2

Plot of the factor loadings of food groups (active variables) and food items (supplementary variables). Active and supplementary variables are plotted on the first two components of the PCA. All active variables (food groups) appear in green and capital letters. Supplementary variables (food items) appear in orange and small letters. For clarity, only well represented food items, i.e. items whose sum of cos² on the first two components was superior to the mean, are named in the graph. Other food items were not informative for interpretation and were not labelled.