There is variability in the association between dietary intake and health outcomes across different countries, especially among the elderly. We used the gold standard dietary assessment method, a weighed food record, to examine the association between dietary pattern and mortality in a representative sample of community dwelling participants from Great Britain aged 65 years and older.
Dietary intake was recorded at baseline in 1017 elderly participants (520 men, 497 women, mean age 76.3+/-7.4 years). Exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine dietary patterns and participants were followed up over an average of 9.2 years for mortality.
The factor analysis revealed four interpretable principal components accounting for approximately 9.8% of the total variance, with similar patterns across sex. A 'Mediterranean-style' dietary pattern explained the greatest proportion of the variance (3.7%), followed by 'health-aware' (2.2%), 'traditional' (2.0%) and 'sweet and fat' (1.9%) factors. There were a total of 683 deaths through follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounders, only the Mediterranean-style dietary pattern remained associated with mortality (highest vs lowest tertile; hazard ratio=0.82, 95% CI, 0.68-1.00). The benefits of the Mediterranean-style diet were only observed among women (hazard ratio=0.71, 95% CI 0.52-0.96) although in men the traditional diet was a risk factor for mortality (hazard ratio=1.30, 95% CI 1.00-1.71).
Using a gold standard approach, our results confirm previous evidence that dietary patterns are important in longevity among the elderly.