Comparison of baseline fat-related eating behaviors of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Colombian, and Guatemalan participants who joined a cholesterol education project.

OBJECTIVE: The objective is to compare baseline fat-related eating behaviors among Hispanic subgroups who joined a cholesterol education research project in New England. DESIGN: Participants attended baseline screenings as part of the study. They had their height, weight, and blood cholesterol measured and completed baseline surveys with demographic, risk factor, dietary, and psychosocial questions. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 370 Puerto Rican, 210 Colombian, 357 Dominican, and 102 Guatemalan subjects participated in the baseline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Dietary behavior was measured using the Food Habits Questionnaire (FHQ), which was originally developed to assess food choices and preparation patterns related to adopting a low-fat diet. Measures include FHQ fat summary scores (a reflection of total fat intake), fat behavior subscales, and individual fat-related behaviors. ANALYSIS: Analysis of variance was used to compare FHQ fat summary scores and multivariate analysis of variance was used to compare fat behavior scores and individual food item scores for the 4 Hispanic subgroups. Age and gender were covariates in the models. RESULTS: Puerto Rican participants had a significantly higher mean FHQ fat summary score than Dominicans and Guatemalans and a higher prevalence of many fat-related eating behaviors. Although there were some differences by subgroup, the 4 most prevalent fat-related behaviors were similar: cooking with fat/oil, eating higher-fat sweets, eating higher-fat snacks, and eating dinners with meat. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Future educational programs and materials for diverse Hispanic audiences in the northeastern United States should include the above issues; however, educational materials and programs ought to be tailored to individuals whenever possible. Efforts may need to focus on Puerto Ricans, who had a higher prevalence of many fat-related behaviors in this study.

The accuracy of self-reported smoking status assessed by cotinine test strips.

We evaluated a new cotinine test strip to assess smoking status. Urine cotinine was measured using cotinine test strips and also by gas chromatographic techniques (GC) (as the reference criterion). Smoking status was assessed with a self-administered questionnaire. The cotinine test strip identified smokers with a very high level of agreement (97.3% using 100 ng/ml and 97.1% using 250 ng/ml for the cutoff point) and non-smokers with a fair-to-moderate level of agreement (74.5% using 100 ng/ml and 86.4% using 250 ng/ml for the cutoff point). These data suggest that the cotinine test strip appears to provide a reasonably accurate measure of smoking status. Since this was the first study to evaluate the cotinine test strip using the test strip prototype, larger clinical trials are needed to evaluate the validity of the cotinine test strip compared to GC measurements to confirm smoking status.