Prevalence and determinants of healthy and balanced diet among office workers in Southern Sri Lanka

Background An unhealthy diet is a key risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCD), which account for a significant number of premature deaths and disability adjusted life years worldwide. Office workers are reported to have unhealthy and unbalanced diets, while being sedentary due to the nature of their work, placing them at a greater risk of NCD. This study aimed to determine dietary intake and associated factors among office workers in Southern Sri Lanka. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among 518 clerical workers in 20 offices in the Galle district. Socio-demographic, health, and work-related data with details on dietary practices were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Twenty-four-hour dietary recall was used to assess dietary intake, which was converted into the number of servings of each food group. Healthy dietary intake was defined as ‘adherence to the numbers of servings recommended in Food Based Dietary Guidelines for Sri Lankan for more than three food groups including cereal and cereal-based foods, fruits, and vegetables, with the consumption of one or no unhealthy food per day’. Results Only 4.6% (n = 24) of the participants consumed a healthy diet, while a considerable proportion had the recommended intake of cereal-based foods, vegetables and fish, meat and pulses (65.3%, 65.8% and 50.8%, respectively). Fruit, dairy product, nut and seed intake was low among the participants. Meal skipping and group eating were significantly associated with an overall unhealthy diet. Stratified analysis showed sex as an effect modification for the association between group eating and unhealthy diet. In multivariate analysis none of the factors showed significant association with healthy dietary intake. Conclusions Dietary intake was suboptimal among Sri Lankan office workers, and selected eating behaviours are associated with an unhealthy dietary intake. This study recommends introducing health-promoting interventions for office workers to control dietary risk factors.