Abstract:
Background
The prevalence of overweight and obesity is rising at a rapid pace and is associated with
negative health consequences like cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Obesity is a multifactorial problem that develops mainly from lifestyle factors including physi cal inactivity and poor dietary intake. Dietary diversity is a simplified method for assessing
the adequacy and quality of diet and is associated with nutritional need and overall health
status. Therefore, we conducted this study to synthesize the associations between con sumption of a diversified diet and overweight/ obesity among adults living in pastoral com munities in Monduli district in Tanzania.
Methods
This was a cross-sectional study conducted among 510 adults aged � 18 years old in the
Monduli district, Arusha region in Tanzania. We conducted face-to-face interviews to collect
information about socio-demographic characteristics, 24-hours dietary recall, and anthropo metric measurements. The dietary diversity score (DDS) was constructed and used to
determine the diversity of the diet consumed. We performed the multivariate Poisson
regressions to determine the prevalence ratio (PR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). The
dependent variables were overweight and general obesity as measured by body mass
index (BMI), abdominal obesity measured by waist-hip ratio (WHR) and waist circumference
(WC).Results
The prevalence of general obesity based on BMI was 20.2% (95%CI; 16.9–23.9), abdominal
obesity based on WHR was 37.8% (95%CI; 33.7–42.1), and WC was 29.1% (95%CI; 25.2–
33.1). More than half (54.3%) of the participants consumed an adequate dietary diversity
(DDS �4). After adjustment for potential confounders, the prevalence of abdominal obesity
by WHR decreased with higher DDS among male (APR = 0.42; 95% CI, 0.22–0.77) and
female participants (APR = 0.63; 95% CI, 0.41–0.94). There were inconsistent positive
associations between DDS and prevalence of overweight and general obesity among male
and female. There was no association between DDS and abdominal obesity by WC.
Conclusion
More than half of the pastoralists have consumed an adequate diversified diet. Given the
inconsistent findings on associations between dietary diversity and obesity measures, this
study suggests that targeting dietary diversity as an overweight/obesity prevention strategy
requires careful consideration.
