Familial Types and Dietary Quality in Korean Elderly

ABSTRACT

Background@#The aim of this study is to assess the relationships between familial types and dietary quality measured by the Korean Healthy Eating Index (KHEI) in representative Korean elderly. @*Methods@#We used cross-sectional data from 4,260 Korean elderly, aged over 65 years, who had participated in the 2016-2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The 14-item KHEI scores were calculated from the Food Frequency Questionnaire and the Dietary Habit Survey from the Nutrition Survey.Familial type was categorized into three groups of Live alone (LA), Live with a partner with or without other(s) (LP), and Live with other(s) without a partner (LO) based on the Household Interview Survey. @*Results@#LP had better dietary quality than LO for both sexes (both P<0.05). LA (64.5; standard error [SE], 1.0) had worse dietary quality than LP (66.7; SE, 0.6]) in elderly male (P<0.05) while they were not significantly different in elderly female. The percentages of subjects having poor dietary quality (total KHEI score of ≤50) in LA, LP, and LO were 20.6% (SE, 2.7), 7.3% (SE, 0.8), 8.9% (SE, 3.6) in elderly male, and 9.6% (SE, 1.2), 5.7% (SE, 0.8), 12.9% (SE, 1.8) in elderly female, respectively. The multivariate-adjusted odds ratios of having poor dietary quality compared with LP was 2.45 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.66-3.60) for LA male, and 1.98 (95% CI, 1.19-3.28) for LO female. @*Conclusions@#Familial type affects dietary quality in Korean elderly. However, differential associations were shown between elderly male and female.