Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Psychosocial factors affecting adherence to the mediterranean diet
Coordinator
Identify key sociodemographic and psychosocial factors associated with adherence to the Mediterranean diet in adults and free-living older adults throughout Italy, and also detecting individual-level and environmental barriers that may affect this age group engaging in consistent healthful dietary habits in connection with Spoke 1 (e.g., social isolation, low-income, neighbourhoods with high rates of poverty, poor nutrition literacy).
Analyses on existing population-based cohorts including adults and people aged ≥65 years (M24)
Together with nutritional and eating behaviors characterizing the Mediterranean dietary pattern, other lifestyle factors are known to characterize the Mediterranean lifestyle. For instance, family links, with poor social isolation, and common sense of community have been hypothesized to potentially play a role in individuals’ health. However, these features characterizing the traditional lifestyle of older generations of individuals living in the Mediterranean area are gradually changing, living the place to a more stressful way of life. The study of the Mediterranean diet principles and lifestyle in modern societies revealed a discouraging abandonment of traditional eating and behavioral habits, due to economic, cultural, and psychosocial factors. Among the latter, there is evidence of the importance of social relations in late life, including frequency of contacts, network size, and relationships derived from personal choice, which are associated with positive outcomes and higher quality of life. Among others, also family ties have been demonstrated to dominate the networks of older adults and still represent a key characteristic of social integration among elderly individuals living in Mediterranean countries.
Data from an existing sample of southern Italian individuals will be analyzed. The sample included about 2,000 participants of all ages (older than 18 y) for which background variables (age, sex, education, etc.) have been collected. Dietary data were collected through a 110-item food frequency questionnaire validated for the Italian population. Specific information on social resources, aimed to provide a profile of an individual’s social isolation/ integration through asking the relation with different sources of social support (from more proximal to more distal, i.e. family, friends, neighborhood/ community/church, job colleagues, health care providers) and a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (no support) to 5 (great support) as answer option will be analyzed as potential determinants of adherence to the Mediterranean diet.
The association of sociodemographic and psychosocial factors with adherence to the Mediterranean diet in adults and free-living older adults will be assessed. Specifically, individual-level and environmental barriers that may affect this age group engaging in consistent healthful dietary habits (e.g., social isolation, low-income) will be further explored.
