Dietary patterns and their association with food and nutrient intake in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Potsdam study

Dietary pattern analysis has recently received growing attention, as it mig ht be more appropriate in studies of diet-disease associations than the sin gle food or nutrient approach that has dominated past epidemiological resea rch. Factor analysis is a technique which is commonly used to identify diet ary patterns within study populations. However, the ability of factor solut ions to account for variance of food and nutrient intake has so far remaine d unclear. The present study therefore explored the statistical properties of dietary patterns with regard to the explained variance. Food intake of 8 975 men and 13 379 women, assessed by a food-frequency questionnaire, was a ggregated into forty-seven separate food groups. Dietary patterns were iden tified by principal component analysis and subsequent varimax rotation. Sev en factors were retained for both men and women, which accounted for about 31 % of the total variance. The explained variance was relatively high (>40 %) for cooked vegetables, sauce, meat, dessert, cake, bread other than who lemeal, raw vegetables, processed meat, high-fat cheese, butter and margari ne. Factor scores were used to investigate associations between the factors and nutrient intake. The patterns accounted for relatively large proportio ns of variance of energy and macronutrient intake, but for less variance of alcohol and micronutrient intake, especially of retinol, beta -carotene, v itamin E, Ca and ascorbic acid. In addition. factors were related to age, B MI, physical activity, education, smoking and vitamin and mineral supplemen t use.