Correlation between Diet Quality and Metabolic Syndrome

Background: The metabolic syndrome (MetS) is increasing with an alarmingrate world wide. Since diet components studies that focus on MetS haveproduced largely inconsistent results, assessing the whole diet than singlenutrients on health can be more practical. The purpose of this study was todetermine the association between diet quality and MetS components. Methods:This cross-sectional study included a total of 152 participants aged 20-55 yearsrecruited from the endocrinology center of Tehran University of medicalsciences. Dietary intake assessed by food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) wasused to calculate healthy eating index 2010 (HEI-2010). Body mass index(BMI), weight, height, waist circumference, high density lipoprotein-cholesterol(HDL-c), triglycerides (TG), fasting blood glucose (FBG), and blood pressurewere measured. Results: In this study HEI mean score was 55.26. Based on HEI-2010 values, diet quality was good in 0.7% of participants, needed improvementin 55.9%, and was poor in 43.4% of cases. Diet quality (HEI) was significantlyand linearly related with systolic and diastolic blood pressure, TG, and BMI (P <0.05). Conclusions: According to this study, low diet quality can be related toMetS components.