Use of the Nutrition Label in Patients with Chronic Disease: KNHANES, 2013-2015

Abstract

Introduction: Dietary habits and dietary patterns are changing due to various socio-cultural factors such as improving living standards, increasing nuclear families, and shortening domestic working hours due to increased social participation of women. This phenomenon increases the intake of processed foods and animal foods, induces various chronic diseases, and poses a health risk. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and cancer are increasing worldwide, and patients with chronic diseases need to know food information for healthy eating. Nutrition labels are the easiest way to get information about packaged foods, and nutrition labeling is one way of getting health literacy, which ultimately leads to health cost savings. Therefore, this study aims to identify factors that affect the use of nutrition labeling and the nutrients of interest in patients with chronic diseases, and to utilize them as basic data for future policy making. Methods: This study was conducted on 15127 adults aged 19 years or older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2013-2015). The target diseases were diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia, which are chronic diseases related to eating habits. Each disease was answered as 'Yes' to the question 'Have you ever been diagnosed with a doctor for each disease?' The use of nutrition labeling was defined as 'yes' to the question 'Do you read nutrition labeling when buying or choosing processed food?' Nutrition labeling Non-users were both those who said they did not read the nutrition label and those who said they did not know the nutrition label. The definition of the nutrients of interest was determined by asking the users of nutrition labels the question "What nutrients are most interested in nutrition labeling?" Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the data.

Results: Female were more likely to use nutrition labeling than male. The higher the age, the higher the income level, and the higher the education level, the higher the rate of using nutrition labeling. The percentage of using nutrition labeling was higher for people with spouses than people without spouses. Compared to those who did not use nutrition labeling, those who used it were 1.11 times higher but it was not significant. The number of people who used it compared to those who did not use nutrition labeling was 1.03 times higher among diabetic patients and 0.98 times higher among patients with dyslipidemia, but these were also not significant. However, in hypertension patients, the use of nutrition labeling was significant (OR: 1.26, CI: 1.09-1.46). In relation to the nutrients of interest and patients, the person with at least one diseases among those three diseases has the most choice of carbohydrate (OR: 2.18, CI: 1.57-3.04). Diabetes patients showed the highest number of carbohydrates (OR:5.33, CI:3.52-8.05) and patients with dyslipidemia were more likely to choose carbohydrate (OR: 2.04, CI: 1.39-2.99) and fat (OR: 1.37, CI: 1.09-1.71). Patients with hypertension were found to be more aware of sodium information(OR: 1.21, CI: 0.83-1.77), but the results were not significant.

Conclusion: This study examined the use of nutrition labeling in patients with chronic diseases those who need dietary control, through the use of nutrition labeling and analysis of nutrients in patients with chronic diseases. In the case of any disease (have at least one disease)group, diabetes group, and hypertension group, the use of nutrition labeling was higher than that of non - disease group. However, except for hypertension, there was no significant difference. In the case of diabetic patients, carbohydrate was selected as the most interested nutrient and it showed significant difference. For dyslipidemia patients, fat selection was significantly higher, but hypertension patients didn't have any statistically significant result. This result can be used as a basic data of nutrition labeling education and policy for patients with chronic diseases and it will help development of more effective nutrition labeling method in the characteristics of patients with chronic diseases which have a high proportion of the elderly.