Ecological study on the relationship among food supply consumption and health: time trend and across-nation analyses

  • 彭 巧珍

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

Aims To track Taiwanese food and nutrient supplies and population intake against the nutrition recommendations by food security indices which used designed by the author to evaluate food insecurity and to compare quality quantity and trends of food supply and degree of food westernization in Taiwan from 1984 to 2009 compared with Asian countries and world continents by using FAO/UN and Taiwan food balance data Methods Food balance sheets from 1991 to 2010 were used to estimate food and nutrient supplies and data from 1993-1996 (n = 3 915) and 2005-2008 (n = 2 908) Taiwanese Nutrition and Health Surveys to assess intake of Taiwanese population Levels of age-and-gender specific Food Guides and Dietary Reference Intakes were multiplied by the population size and then summed to determine food and nutrient needs Food Security Indices (FSIs) and Nutrient Security Indices (NSIs) were defined as the geometric means of supply-to-needs ratio (S-Nr) and intake-to-needs ratio (I-Nr) with reference to an ideal of 1 0 Higher values indicate potential food insecurity Food balance sheets of Taiwan and international countries including five continents and three most populated countries each in Eastern Southern and South Eastern Asia over the period 1984-2009 were compared to evaluate the quantity and quality of food supply per capita referenced to Taiwan food guides The population-weighted means of food supply from Europe North America South America and Australia & New Zealand Continents in terms of energy and nutrient distributions animal/plant sources and sugar/alcohol contribution were used as indicators of westernization Trends of food supply per capita of six food groups were plotted and linear regression was applied to evaluate food changes Results From 1997 to 2010 the S-Nr for most food categories and nutrients decreased; dairy products and vegetables fell below the recommendations in 2010 For food intake all except cereals/roots increased between the two surveys but only vegetables and soy/fish/meat/egg met the needs in 2005-2008 For both surveys high FSIs for dairy (2 16 2 26) were due to low supply and low intake and those for soy/fish/meat/egg (1 78 1 91) to oversupply and overconsumption The FSIs for fruit improved from 1 50 to 1 17 with a smaller supply but more consumption NSIs explained the FSIs Comparing quantity and quality of food supply internationally for the period of 1984-2009 Taiwan’s food supply provided sufficient quantity in food energy with the lowest cereals/roots supply and rice to wheat ratio but the highest meat and oil supplies per capita among the 10 studied Asian countries Taiwan food supply showed the most westernization among these countries as indicated by high animal-derived energy (kcal %kcal) daily dietary protein protein from animal source daily dietary fat fat from animal source the lowest cereals/roots per capita and the lowest plant-to-animal energy ratio Conclusion Novel FSI and NSI algorisms were developed in this study FSIs and NSIs capture composite information about the food supply intake and recommendations which allows food security to be monitored with action-points of 1 0 for food and nutrition policy Food supply of Taiwan although currently sufficient indicated some security problems Evaluation of the quantity quality and trends reflected by food balance data of Taiwan indicated a high tendency of diet westernization when compared with neighborhood Asian countries as well as world continents These time trend across nation analyses reveal some relationship among Taiwanese food supply consumption and health
Date of Award2016 Jul 27
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorHow-Ran Guo (Supervisor)

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