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Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow

Non-communicable diseases (NCD) and lifestyle, particularly diet, have a close relationship. Based on the recent statistics, Croatian men and women lead in European overweight lists, which implies pessimistic prognosis in terms of incidence and prevalence of NCDs in the future. One of the possible s...

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Autores principales: Gerić, Marko, Matković, Katarina, Gajski, Goran, Rumbak, Ivana, Štancl, Paula, Karlić, Rosa, Bituh, Martina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9504207/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36145100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14183725
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author Gerić, Marko
Matković, Katarina
Gajski, Goran
Rumbak, Ivana
Štancl, Paula
Karlić, Rosa
Bituh, Martina
author_facet Gerić, Marko
Matković, Katarina
Gajski, Goran
Rumbak, Ivana
Štancl, Paula
Karlić, Rosa
Bituh, Martina
author_sort Gerić, Marko
collection PubMed
description Non-communicable diseases (NCD) and lifestyle, particularly diet, have a close relationship. Based on the recent statistics, Croatian men and women lead in European overweight lists, which implies pessimistic prognosis in terms of incidence and prevalence of NCDs in the future. One of the possible solutions to overcome weight problems is turn to traditional balanced and sustainable diets, such as the Mediterranean diet. In this study, we assessed adherence towards Mediterranean diet using a validated questionnaire in an online survey and associated adherence scores with several demographic and anthropometric data. Based on the results of a validated Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (N = 3326), we assessed the adherence score to be 7.6 ± 2.5. The score tended to depend on sex, residence, age, education, income, and body mass index (BMI); indeed, women, residents of a coastal part of the country, older volunteers, those possessing a higher education degree, those with higher income, and those with lower BMI were associated with higher scores. As income was one of the significant findings related to higher adherence scores, we developed a dietary plan complying with Mediterranean diet principles that, on average, costed less than the average traditional balanced diet menu. Taken together, this study brought new findings regarding target groups who need to be encouraged to make lifestyle changes, and highlighted the first steps on how to make them.
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spelling pubmed-95042072022-09-24 Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow Gerić, Marko Matković, Katarina Gajski, Goran Rumbak, Ivana Štancl, Paula Karlić, Rosa Bituh, Martina Nutrients Article Non-communicable diseases (NCD) and lifestyle, particularly diet, have a close relationship. Based on the recent statistics, Croatian men and women lead in European overweight lists, which implies pessimistic prognosis in terms of incidence and prevalence of NCDs in the future. One of the possible solutions to overcome weight problems is turn to traditional balanced and sustainable diets, such as the Mediterranean diet. In this study, we assessed adherence towards Mediterranean diet using a validated questionnaire in an online survey and associated adherence scores with several demographic and anthropometric data. Based on the results of a validated Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (N = 3326), we assessed the adherence score to be 7.6 ± 2.5. The score tended to depend on sex, residence, age, education, income, and body mass index (BMI); indeed, women, residents of a coastal part of the country, older volunteers, those possessing a higher education degree, those with higher income, and those with lower BMI were associated with higher scores. As income was one of the significant findings related to higher adherence scores, we developed a dietary plan complying with Mediterranean diet principles that, on average, costed less than the average traditional balanced diet menu. Taken together, this study brought new findings regarding target groups who need to be encouraged to make lifestyle changes, and highlighted the first steps on how to make them. MDPI 2022-09-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9504207/ /pubmed/36145100 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14183725 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/).
spellingShingle Article
Gerić, Marko
Matković, Katarina
Gajski, Goran
Rumbak, Ivana
Štancl, Paula
Karlić, Rosa
Bituh, Martina
Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title_full Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title_fullStr Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title_full_unstemmed Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title_short Adherence to Mediterranean Diet in Croatia: Lessons Learned Today for a Brighter Tomorrow
title_sort adherence to mediterranean diet in croatia: lessons learned today for a brighter tomorrow
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9504207/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36145100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14183725
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