Prevalence of lifestyle disease among the regular eatery consumers in Malappuram District

Abstract

“Lifestyle diseases” termed primarily arises from the abnormal lifestyle of a person. An alarming number of diseases fall under this category. is one associated with the way a person or group of people lives. This group of diseases acts like a viscous cycle as one disease is interlinked with the other in the sense that one of them can perpetuate the other. The prevalence of lifestyle diseases is high and alarmingly increasing in Malappuram district of Kerala. So, the study aimed to find the prevalence of lifestyle disease related risk factors among the regular eaters of food from food outlets. The cross-sectional study was conducted in Manjeri municipality of Malappuram district. In this study the prevalence of life style diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cancer among regular eaters of food from food outlets was assessed. A questionnaire was made to elicit the demographic profile, health profile and other risk factors associated with lifestyle. The specific scores were given to responses of various questions, and data was analysed using SPSS software package. A total 200 subjects participated in the study. Among the selected samples, 69% of subjects had the incidence of lifestyle diseases. Among them majority belonged to the category of 40–49-years. 67% of them liked fast foods and remaining 33% subjects was not preferring fast food as an option Diabetes was the most prevalent lifestyle disease among the selected sample (49%of the samples) with 39% of the subjects affected with hypertension and 22.5% subjects with cancer. In terms of age category 20.6% of samples, below 30 years consumed hotel food regularly. Visited food outlets once in a week, 33.5% of sample visited twice in a week, 28.5%of subjects visited thrice in a week, 21.5% subjects visited more than three times in a week. The frequency of visits to the food outlets is strongly associated with the occurrence of the lifestyle diseases. Thus, it can be concluded that eating food away from home from food outlets would lead to the development of lifestyle diseases