Definition of nutritionally qualitative categorizing (proto)nutritypes and a pilot quantitative nutrimeter for mirroring nutritional well-being based on a quality of life health related questionnaire.

Background

there are numerous approaches to assess nutritional status, which are putatively applied to nutritionally classify diseased people, but less information is available to study the role of environmental factors on nutritional well-being. A qualitative (nutritypes) and quantitative (nutrimeter) nutritional categorization based on dietary, lifestyle and disease criteria can be a useful nutritional approach to personalize health interventions and identify at risk individuals.

Methods

cross-sectional study conducted on 102 patients (60 women), evaluating quality of life using the Short-Form 36 questionnaire (SF-36) and lifestyle factors with a general questionnaire, the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS) and the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ). A nutrimeter based on physical activity, fat mass, diet and diseases (hypertension, prediabetes, obesity and dyslipidemia) data was defined with an equation to quantitatively score the nutritive well-being of the participants, and classify them into two (proto)nutritypes.

Results

participants were categorized into two groups (lower/higher global health) according to quality of life. Significant or marginal statistical differences in physical activity, fat mass, diet and disease were found (all p < 0.1). Two (proto)nutritypes were identified based on participant's age, sex, fat mass, physical activity, diet and diseases. Participants classified as high nutritional well-being nutritype showed higher values for physical, mental and global health dimensions. Age, fat mass, physical activity and diet, when categorized by the median, confirm that the designed nutritional well-being nutrimeter identified two (proto)nutritypes.

Conclusions

the association between phenotypical (fat mass/diseases) and lifestyle factors (diet/physical activity) with quality of life allowed categorizing individuals with a nutritional quantitative score or nutrimeter according to their nutritional well-being and discriminate two qualitative (proto)nutritypes.