Abstract

The risks of the metabolic syndrome (MS) is known to be related to the dietary behavior. The objective of this study is to evaluate the association between the relative risks of MS and the dietary habit and to provide the ideal dietary habits for prevention of chronic disease of the middle-aged. Healthy subjects aged 40 - 64 years (male n = 122, female n = 173) were recruited throughout Seoul area. MS was defined according to NCEP-ATP III criteria except central obesity, and Asia-Pacific Area criteria for central obesity (2000) was adapted. Subjects were stratified into 3 groups according to the number of total risk factors: 'MS group' was defined as the subjects who have three or more risk factors, 'Risk group' was defined as ones to have one or two risk factors, and 'Healthy group' defined as ones with no risk factor. In this study, 'Healthy group' comprised of 40.7%, the percentage of 'Risk group' was 49.0%, and the 'MS group' was 9.5% of the total subjects. The MS incidence was associated with low education (p < 0.001), low economic status (p < 0.05), and low self-assessed health recognition (p < 0.05). The risk of MS increased with adverse life styles such as cigarette smoking (p < 0.05), irregular meal time (p < 0.05), skipping lunch (p < 0.05), low interests in balanced diet (p < 0.05), and higher salt intake (p < 0.01). Healthy group self-evaluated nutritional knowledge more highly (p < 0.05) and scored higher nutritional knowledge (p < 0.001). However, there was no difference in overall nutritional behavior among the three groups, which implies that nutritional education method should be developed for the subjects to practice their learning efficiently.

• Keywords: metabolic syndrome; dietary habits; middle-aged