The association between dietary patterns and quality of life: a cross-sectional study among a large sample of industrial employees

BACKGROUND: considering the diet, as a whole (dietary patterns), can provide more information regarding dietary guidelines to decrease health problems and improve quality of life (QoL) of industrial workers.Therefore, the aims of this study were to identify major dietary patterns and to evaluate their association with quality of life among Iranian industrial employees. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 3,063 employees of Isfahan Steel Company, Isfahan, Iran, in 2015. Dietary data were evaluated through a validated form of a food frequency questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis was used to extract major dietary patterns,. To assess the QoL, Euro-QoL five- dimension questionnaire was used. Latent class analysis was used to classify participants based on QoL. Multivariable logistic regression was employed to evaluate the association between dietary patterns and QoL. RESULTS: Three dietary patterns, i.e. western, healthy and traditional, and two classes, i.e. high and low quality of life. were identified from study participants. Lower adherence to the healthy dietary pattern increased the risk of being in low QoL class in which subjects in the lowest tertile of healthy dietary intake had higher odds of being in low QoL class (adjusted OR (AOR): 1.51, 95% CI: 1.19–1.91). However, subjects in the lowest tertile of traditional diet, low adherence, had 30% lower risk of belonging to the low QoL class (AOR:0.70, 95% CI: 0.55–0.88). Higher adherence to western dietary pattern increased the risk of low quality of life, but it was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Higher adherence to a healthy diet and lower adherence to traditional dietary pattern were associated with better QoL in manufacturing employees. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-16898-9.