Background: Regular nutrition label use may have important long-term health implications. To our knowledge, the role of nutrition label use in protecting against the development of chronic diseases was unexplored prospectively before this study.Objective: We tested the association between nutrition label use and risk of a future diabetes diagnosis in a multiethnic US cohort.Design: Data from the ongoing National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY79) were analyzed. From 2002 (baseline) to 5 follow-up time points (2004-2012), 7150 diabetes-free, multiethnic young adults were prospectively followed for a diagnosis of incident diabetes. Nutrition label use, diabetes diagnosis, time to diabetes diagnosis, and all covariates were self-reported.Results: Between January 2002 and September 2013, 430 participants (6.0%) were diagnosed with diabetes. A weighted, multivariable, extended Cox regression was conducted, which suggested that in nutrition label users, the HR of diabetes diagnosis risk decreased significantly with time (P-nutrition label use × time interaction < 0.05) compared with risk in nutrition label nonusers.Conclusions: There is an association between nutrition label use and diabetes risk in the longer term. However, additional longitudinal research with a robust dietary intake assessment is needed to test this hypothesis.
Keywords: NLSY79 cohort; US adults; food label; longitudinal data; nutrition label; risk of diabetes.
© 2017 American Society for Nutrition.