Elsevier

Advances in Nutrition

Volume 10, Issue 2, March 2019, Pages 205-218
Advances in Nutrition

Food Groups and Risk of Overweight, Obesity, and Weight Gain: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies

https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmy092Get rights and content
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open access

ABSTRACT

This meta-analysis summarizes the evidence of a prospective association between the intake of foods [whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs)] and risk of general overweight/obesity, abdominal obesity, and weight gain. PubMed and Web of Science were searched for prospective observational studies until August 2018. Summary RRs and 95% CIs were estimated from 43 reports for the highest compared with the lowest intake categories, as well as for linear and nonlinear relations focusing on each outcome separately: overweight/obesity, abdominal obesity, and weight gain. The quality of evidence was evaluated with use of the NutriGrade tool. In the dose-response meta-analysis, inverse associations were found for whole-grain (RRoverweight/obesity: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.89, 0.96), fruit (RRoverweight/obesity: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.86, 1.00; RRweight gain: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.86, 0.97), nut (RRabdominal obesity: 0.42; 95% CI: 0.31, 0.57), legume (RRoverweight/obesity: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.93), and fish (RRabdominal obesity: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.71, 0.97) consumption and positive associations were found for refined grains (RRoverweight/obesity: 1.05; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.10), red meat (RRabdominal obesity: 1.10; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.16; RRweight gain: 1.14; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.26), and SSBs (RRoverweight/obesity: 1.05; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.11; RRabdominal obesity: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.20). The dose-response meta-analytical findings provided very low to low quality of evidence that certain food groups have an impact on different measurements of adiposity risk. To improve the quality of evidence, better-designed observational studies, inclusion of intervention trials, and use of novel statistical methods (e.g., substitution analyses or network meta-analyses) are needed.

food groups
diet
meta-analysis
dose-response
adiposity
weight gain

Abbreviations used

RCT
randomized controlled trial
SSB
sugar-sweetened beverage
WCRF
World Cancer Research Fund

Cited by (0)

Supported by NutriAct-Competence Cluster Nutrition Research Berlin-Potsdam funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FKZ: 01EA1408A-G). The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.

Author disclosures: CS, GH, AB, HB, and LS, no conflicts of interest. SS and MN work at the Public Research Institution (Member of the Leibniz Society), German Diabetes Center (DDZ), which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research, and Technology of the State North Rhine-Westphalia.

PROSPERO-registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=37069