Association of food patterns, central obesity measures and metabolic risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) in middle aged Bengalee Hindu men, Calcutta, India.

The association of central obesity measures and food patterns with metabolic risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) were studied among middle aged (>or =30 years) Bengalee Hindu men of Calcutta, India. CHD risk factors included total cholesterol (TC), fasting triglyceride (FTG), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) and very low density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-c). The total sample size in the study was 212 male individuals. Anthropometric measurements, metabolic and food pattern variables were collected from each participant. The relative role of central obesity measures and food pattern variables in explaining metabolic risk factors of CHD were also made in this study. The results revealed that body mass index (BMI) had no significant relation with any of the metabolic risk factors of CHD. Whereas almost all-central obesity measures, namely waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), and conicity index (CI) were significantly and positively related with TC, FTG, FPG and VLDL-c. Of the food pattern variables, only the frequency of egg, fried snacks and Bengalee sweets consumption were positively and significantly related with all central obesity measures. In contrast, frequency of chicken and fish consumption was negatively associated with central obesity measures. Conicity index (CI) was found to be the most consistent in explaining metabolic variables of CHD. Percent of variance explained by central obesity measures and food patterns were TC (10%), FPG (16%), FTG (6.6%) and VLDL-c (6.7%). Significant negative association of chicken and fish consumption with central obesity measures indicates the beneficial effect of both these items in this population.