Comparison of Adherence to Mediterranean Diet between Spanish and German School-Children and Influence of Gender, Overweight, and Physical Activity.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Grams, Lena Nelius, Anne-Katrin Pastor, Guadalupe Garrido Sillero-Quintana, Manuel Veiga, Óscar L. Homeyer, Denise Kück, Momme
Editor	Tur, Josep A.
Copyright Year	2022
Abstract	Background: Poor dietary habits and low levels of physical activity (PA) have a strong tendency to track from childhood into adulthood. The Mediterranean Diet (MD) is known to be extremely healthy, associated with lower BMI and a lower risk of obesity in children and adolescents. Therefore, adherence to the MD was compared between Spanish (n = 182) and German (n = 152) children aged 10 to 13 years to examine a possible more “westernized” diet in Spain with a non-Mediterranean country, that traditionally prefers a “Western diet” and to determine the association between adherence to the MD and gender, body composition, and PA levels. Methods: In the German observational longitudinal cohort study and the Spanish cohort study, body composition and questionnaires (KIDMED, Diet Quality (IAES)) were obtained, and accelerometers (Actigraph) were applied to detect PA. Results: Girls had higher BMI-standard deviation score (SDS) than boys and Spanish girls were less active than boys. Differences were detected in MD habits, such as favorable fruit-, vegetables-, fish-intakes, and dairy products in Spanish children and unfavorable consumptions of fast food, processed bakery goods, candies, and sweet beverages in German children. Independently of country, girls, children with lower BMI-SDS and children with higher PA level were related with better diet quality. Conclusion: Spanish children showed higher adherence to MD and diet quality (IAES) compared to German children, but there was a trend toward a more “westernized” diet. Gender, body composition, and PA influenced nutrition regardless of country.
Journal	Nutrients
Volume Number	14
PubMed Central reference number	PMC9655044
Issue Number	21
PubMed reference number	36364959
e-ISSN	20726643
DOI	10.3390/nu14214697
Language	English
Publisher	MDPI
Publisher Date	2022-11-07
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). © 2022 by the authors.
Subject Keyword	nutrition mediterranean diet kidmed physical activity adolescents body composition
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Food Science Nutrition and Dietetics