Dietary Patterns and the Metabolic Syndrome in Korean Adolescents

Abstract

The presence of metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents represents a high-risk state that conveys an increased risk of metabolic disease (1,2). The importance of the role of dietary patterns cannot be overemphasized because of the relation to metabolic disease. Although previous studies show that some dietary patterns are related to the risk of the metabolic syndrome (3–6), these studies focus on adults and were rarely conducted on children or adolescents in a nationally based survey. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify dietary patterns and to examine the association between dietary patterns and the metabolic syndrome in Korean adolescents. Although studies on the Korean population may yield unique results primarily due to the ethnic homogeneity inherent to the Korean population with very little genetic diversity, the results tend to be applicable to other countries as well. The 2001 Korean National Health and Nutrition Survey, a cross-sectional and nationally representative survey, was conducted from November to December 2001. A stratified, multistage, probability sampling design was used, with selection made from sampling units. Weights indicating the probability of being sampled were assigned to each participant, which enabled the results to represent the entire Korean population. A total of 12,441 individuals participated in the Health Interview Survey, which included a 24-h dietary intake recall. …