Impact of an intervention on the quality of diet of workers

INTRODUCTION: The rates of overweight and obesity have increased in recent years and this trend also reflect in the workers. The workplace is a strategic point for actions to encourage the adoption of healthy lifestyles through nutrition, physical activity and weight control. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of a nutritional intervention at the workplace on the quality of adult workers diet. METHODS: This is a randomized community trial and it ran for 6 months, involving 279 employees of four companies in the city of São Paulo. Intervention was based on self-monitoring of weight with the help of software Healthy Weight Program, where a worker sent the weight, by email, and received an accompanying graph with messages of encourage to healthy behaviors of diet and physical activity. Diet was assessed by 24h dietary recall and overall diet quality was assessed by the Diet Quality Index (DQIa) adapted to energy requirements. This index is composed of 10 components (1-Cereals and tubers; 2- Vegetables and legumes, 3- Fruit 4- Milk and dairy products; 5- Meat and eggs 6- Beans; 7- Total Fat: 8- Saturated Fat , 9- Sodium and 10- Variety), items that received scores of 0 (inadequate intake) to 10 (recommended intake). To evaluate the impact of the intervention was used a mean of energy consumption, the DQIa total and its components before and after intervention and the difference between groups to determine the effect of raw impact of the intervention. The impact was adjusted for sex, marital status, education and age. RESULTS: The intervention resulted in improvement in the raw impact of the component grains and tubers. After the intervention there was a decrease in the DQIa in the control group, while the intervention group had no significant difference. Observed positive effect of intervention among participants who had a poorer quality of diet at baseline (+6.38 points in DQIa). CONCLUSION: The intervention was not effective in promoting the improvement of overall diet quality, resulted in improved component cereals and tubers of DQIa, an increase of 0,73 point after the intervention. The expressive effect of the intervention was observed among workers who were initially the worst quality of the diet, with an impact of more than 6 points in DQIa