Healthy Eating Index and Dietary Variety Scores in a Biracial Population of Older Persons

CC Tangney, JL Bienias,  DA Evans,  MC Morris.
Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612

The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is a single summary measure of diet quality based in part on the Dietary Guidelines and the Food Guide Pyramid. There are limited data describing the dietary quality of older biracial populations. We calculated the HEI including a modified variety score, for nearly 5000 black and white participants of the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP) who completed food frequency questionnaires (FFQ). CHAP is an ongoing community study of 6,162 persons aged 65 to 102 years (61% blacks, 39% whites); 4,932 of the 5491 surviving CHAP participants (89.8%) completed the FFQ.  The questionnaires were analyzed using the Harvard nutrient database for daily intakes of cholesterol, and sodium along with the proportion of energy consumed as total fat and saturated fat. The nutritionist categorized the 139 food items on the FFQ into food groups for computation of daily servings of the five food groups as well as a modified variety score.  With a possible perfect HEI of 100, the mean scores were for the total population, 70.6; black women, 71.3; white women, 73.2; black men, 66.6; and white men, 70.5. With the exception of similar scores for meat and sodium components, black men had the lowest scores for all other components of the HEI.  Computation of the HEI in populations of older persons may provide nutrition educators a pragmatic means to target their programs more efficiently.

Contact person:
Christy Tangney, PhD, CNS, FACN
Department of Clinical Nutrition
Preventive Cardiology Center Rush Pres St Lukes MC 1704
West Van Buren Chicago, IL 60612
Telephone: 312/942/5995
Fax: 312/942/5203
E-mail: Christy_Tangney@rsh.net

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