Baseline determinants of global diet quality in older men and women from the NuAge cohort

Judicious food choices are of prime importance during aging. OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to identify individual and collective attributes determining global diet quality (DQ). METHODOLOGY: Participants were 1,793 adults (52% women) from the NuAge study on nutrition and successful aging. Subjects aged 67 to 84 years in relatively good health were recruited from the Québec Medicare Database. Sociodemographic, affective, and cognitive data, health conditions, perceived physical health and functional status, dietary habits and dietary attributes and community resources were obtained using questionnaires. Body weight and height were measured and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Three non-consecutive 24-hour diet recalls were collected at recruitment. DQ, assessed using the Canadian Healthy Eating Index (C-HEI, /100), was computed on the mean intakes from the diet recalls. Analyses were stratified by gender. Variables significantly related to DQ in bivariate analyses (p