Eating habits and risk of cardiovascular disease in college students

Abstract

Study Design: Descriptive, observational, cross-sectional. Aims: The aims of this study were to qualitatively describe the frequency of eating certain foods, as risk and protective for cardiovascular disease (CVD), and determine the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) in supposedly healthy individuals, graduate students from a Brazilian public university. Methodology: Participants were 97 students, 45 males and 52 females, 18-25 years. After signing the consent form, approved by the Ethics Committee on Research, students completed a questionnaire survey data. We studied food classified as risk and protection, as assessed by its chemical composition tables. The Chi-square test was used when the expected frequencies greater than or equal to 5. For other parameters we used the Fisher exact test. Results: Among the foods considered protective stood out the daily intake of vegetables (33%), greens (22%) and fruit (17%). Among the foods considered at risk are the daily intake of coffee / tea with sugar (39%), mayonnaise / margarine / butter (34%) and sweets (14%). There was variation in consumption according to sex, for the frequencies of 0, 1, 2 and 4 times a week for food: corn flour / cassava, cornstarch cookie /homemade cookie / water and salt cookie, oats, chicken with skin. There was significant variation in daily consumption between the sexes for food: fruit, sweets, mayonnaise / margarine / butter, cornstarch cookie / homemade cookie / water and salt cookie. Conclusion: This study showed that college students presented higher frequency of daily intake of foods considered protective for CVD than risk food. In addition, the calculated FRS demonstrated low risk of developing CVD in studied individuals.