From varied plate to dietary biodiversity

Sammanfattning

The healthfulness of a dietary pattern is not merely measured in its content of nutrients, but also of the diversity of the ingredients present. The methods of analyzing dietary diversity, such as Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) index and Dietary Species Richness (DSR), have been developed in the last decades, used to capture different forms of dietary diversity. Increased dietary diversity has been shown to generate positive health outcomes, even when adjusting for dietary quality. Increased dietary diversity can have further implications on the environment and food system at large, as it can correspond to increased agrobiodiversity, or number of species present and used in the agricultural landscape. In this thesis I apply the contemporary knowledge of dietary diversity to analyze the dietary records data from the HELPFUL-trial conducted by Avesani et al. (2024) – an intervention study in which chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients were put on a more flexible plant predominant diet while retaining safe potassium levels. Since CKD can lead to substantial dietary restriction, it was particularly relevant to know the result on dietary diversity for that patient group, since CKD patients are commonly put on highly restrictive diets to avoid hyperkalemia. For assessing total dietary biodiversity on a species level, no increase in dietary diversity, neither in MDD-W nor DSR, was observed for the trial. However, when applying a threshold value of 15 g, to adjust for species in small amounts, there was an increase in the species count. Suggestions for future intervention studies of similar type could be to more actively stimulate a higher count of species intake, such as by connecting the intervention diet to recipes and meal plans.