Higher vegetable intake and vegetable variety is associated with a better self-reported health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) in a cross-sectional survey of rural northern Ghanaian women in fertile age

BACKGROUND: A higher vegetable intake plays an important role in promoting general health and well-being, but there is a dearth of data on the independent effect of vegetable intake on health-related quality of life (HR-QoL). This study contributes to evidence on the independent effect of vegetable consumption on HR-QoL among women in fertile age. METHODS: A cross-sectional study of a sample of rural women in fertile age (15–49 years, n = 187), randomly selected from 6 rural communities in the Tolon and Savelugu Districts, Northern Region of Ghana. Vegetable consumption in the past month was assessed with a 27-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire; self-reported HR-QoL with the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36); nutritional status with anthropometry; household food security with the household hunger scale (HHS) and demographic and socio-economic related covariates with a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire using face-face interviews. Generalised Linear Models were fitted to assess adjusted mean scores and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) by terciles of vegetable intake and vegetable variety score (VVS) for the HR-QoL, its physical health (PH) and mental health (MH) domains and the SF-36 subscales. RESULTS: The mean vegetable intake of the women was 324.6 ± 196.1 g/day. The mean scores of the HR-QoL, PH and MH were 69.5 ± 13.6, 72.6 ± 17.4 and 66.4 ± 12.6 respectively. The alpha Cronbach measure of reliability for the HR-QoL, PH and MH were 0.78, 0.75 and 0.62 respectively. After adjusting for potential confounders such as age, body-mass-index (BMI), parity, educational status, occupation, marital status, HHS and household asset index, we observed an increasing trend across terciles of vegetable intake in the past month for the HR-QoL (P-trend = 0.0003), PH (P-trend = 0.02), MH (P-trend = 0.001) as well as the physical functioning (P-trend = 0.01), role-physical (P-trend <.0001), and role emotional (P-trend <.0001) domains of the SF-36. The multivariate model of the results also showed a significant increasing trend in the adjusted mean scores of the HR-QoL (P-trend = 0.04), MH (P-trend = 0.001) as well as 4 subscales of the SF-36 [role-physical (P-trend = 0.02), role-emotional (P-trend = 0.05), emotional well-being (P-trend = 0.002) and vitality (P-trend <.0001)] across terciles of the VVS. CONCLUSION: The results of the present study suggest a potential beneficial role of high vegetable intake and consumption of more varied vegetables on HR-QoL. Further research is needed to determine the mechanisms driving these influences. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5845-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.