Abstract
Inadequate nutrition intake is considered as an important factor for developing frailty which lead to poor health outcomes in elderly. Recently whole diet approach and food diversity studies were conducted instead of focusing on a single nutrient since food and meals contain interacting elements. However, it is still unknown what kind of food consumption pattern is influential to frailty. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between food groups consumption and frailty in community-dwelling elderly. We used baseline data from a cohort study in Kashiwa city, Chiba prefecture, Japan. The participants were randomly selected from elderly aged 65 years old and over who were non-eligible for long-term care. We assessed frequency of each food group consumption by self-administered questionnaire. Food was divided into 10 groups: meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, soy beans, vegetables, fruits, seaweed, potatoes and fried foods. Frailty was defined using Kihon checklist (a Japanese Frailty Index). Binary logistic regression analysis was run to examine the association between food groups and frailty. Among 2,003 participants (mean age was 73.0 ± 5.6), 186 (9.3%) participants were classified as frail group. In logistic regression model, low consumption of meat (OR 1.46, 95%CI 1.05–2.04), fish (OR 1.46, 95%CI 1.06–2.01) and soy beans (OR 1.52, 95%CI 1.05–2.22) were positively associated with frailty. Frail elderly tended to eat less meat, fish and soybean which are among protein foods group, suggesting that increasing frequency of regular protein foods group intake might be essential in prevention of frailty progression.