Association between Dietary Quality and Prediabetes based on the Diet Balance Index

Dietary quality is an important factor influencing prediabetes, but few studies have applied the Chinese Diet Balance Index (DBI-16) to evaluate the dietary quality of individuals with prediabetes and explore the associations between dietary quality and prediabetes. In our study, the lower-bound score, higher-bound score and diet quality distance, were respectively calculated to assess dietary quality based on each food group. Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) of unfavorable dietary quality leading to prediabetes in every subgroup. The results were shown that individuals with prediabetes had excessive intake in the categories of cereals, salt and inadequate intake in vegetables, fish and diet variety than participants without prediabetes (all P < 0.01). Unfavourable dietary quality was significantly associated with an increased risk of prediabetes (OR: 1.45, 95%CI: 1.29–1.63), especially among the subjects who lived in rural areas (OR: 1.63, 95%CI: 1.25–1.76), those who had abdominal obesity (OR: 1.58, 95%CI: 1.36–1.85), those who smoked (OR: 1.58, 95%CI: 1.30–1.93), those who consumed alcohol (OR: 1.57, 95%CI: 1.28–1.93) and those who did not drink tea (OR: 1.64, 95%CI: 1.42–1.88). In Conclusion, unfavourable dietary quality was significantly associated with an increased risk of prediabetes.