Reported macronutrient intake and metabolic risk factors: immigrant women from Iran and Turkey compared with native Swedish women

Abstract

Background: Immigrants in general seem to be more vulnerable than the host populations to developing nutrition-related chronic conditions. This may be in part related to diverging dietary habits. Objective: The aim of the study was to examine the nutrient intake and its relationship to metabolic variables among immigrant versus native Swedish women. Design: A cross-sectional health survey of 157 randomly selected foreign-born and native Swedish women. This included 24 h dietary recall repeated four times and administered in the native language. Results: Underreporting was significant, especially among immigrant women. There were no major differences in terms of energy distribution of the macronutrients between very low energy reporters and acceptable energy reporters, indicating that the dietary data reflected the qualitative composition in spite of the underreporting of energy intake. Immigrant women consumed less alcohol and obtained a lower proportion of their energy from saturated fatty acids, but a higher proportion from polyunsaturated fatty acids, sucrose and total carbohydrates. Associations between dietary variables and metabolic risk factors were relatively weak. Conclusions: Underreporting might have attenuated possible associations between diet and risk factors. The study illustrates specific problems in the dietary assessment and the need to develop valid techniques when studying groups of people of diverging ethnic backgrounds. Keywords: dietary intake; immigrants; Iran; metabolic risk factors; Sweden; Turkey; underreporting