What We Eat and Where We Work Is What We Become: Worksite Food Environment Exposure and Cardio-Metabolic Health among Employed Adults of Urban Delhi, India.

The incidence of metabolic syndrome (MS) which is a predictor of increasing CVD is on the rise among adults in urban India. The present study was designed to measure the prevalence of cardio metabolic risk (CMR) as per MS among employed adults in Delhi, India. Study design was cross-sectional. Anthropometric and biochemical measurements were carried out using standard techniques on apparently healthy males and females (n=455) working in various government and private organisations in Delhi, India after obtaining ethical permissions. It was found that more than one-third of the study population had MS (43.8%). A significant difference in the prevalence of MS was seen among males (34.7%) and females (57.5%, p<0.05). The prevalence of MS components was: abdominal obesity (54.3%), hypertriglyceridemia (61.9%), hypertension (56.6%), hypertriglyceridemia (27.4%), low HDL-c levels (63.7%). CMR (assessed from 0-5, where 0 means no MS). It was found that CMR increased with age (β: 0.01; 95% CI: 0.009,0.01; p=0.000) especially among females (β: 0.29; 95% CI: 0.19,0.38; p=0.000) who were consuming frequent non-vegetarian foods (β: 0.04; 95% CI: 0.01,0.09; p=0.07), had family history of diseases (β: 0.08; 95% CI: 0.01,0.18; p=0.09) and were sedentary workers (β: 0.05; 95% CI: 0.00,0.10; p=0.06). Unhealthy worksite food environment characterised by high fast food outlet density (β: 0.003; 95% CI: 0.00,0.007; p=0.04) in close proximity (β: 0.17; 95% CI: 0.36,0.00; p=0.05) to worksite were also associated with MS. There is a high prevalence of individual components of MS and overall prevalence of MS. Food environment and physical inactivity were two paramount factors resulting in increased CMR among the study population.