Diet Quality of Workers and Retirees: A Cross-sectional Analysis of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil)

The objective of this study was to cross-sectionally analyze the diet quality of active workers and retirees to identify possible differences by gender and subgroups of working and nonworking retirees using baseline data from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil), a cohort study of employees of six higher education centers in Brazil. In the first phase of the study, which occurred between 2008 and 2010, the diets of 7,667 participants between 50 and 69 years of age (3,393 [44%] men and 4,274 [56%] women) were analyzed using a Food Frequency Questionnaire. Diets were evaluated using the Brazilian Healthy Eating Index-Revised. We used logistic regression models stratified by sex and adjusted for demographic, social, and health conditions to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for the association of diet quality with working and nonworking retirees. Using active workers as the reference group, the results showed better diet quality among male retirees who were no longer working (OR: 1.58; 95% CI: 1.03–2.41), whereas no difference was detected in male retirees who returned to work (OR: 1.17; 95% CI: 0.80–1.72) in the adjusted models. Among women, the association did not remain significant after multivariate adjustment for confounders. Our results showed gender differences in diet quality between workers and working and nonworking retirees possibly because of worse diet quality among men than among women. Work cessation after retirement is mandatory to improve diet quality among male retirees.