Abstract
Purpose: Mongolian people have traditionally had poor vegetable intake habits, a cause of increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome. Monitoring vegetable intake through the dietary biomarkers such as skin carotenoid level and urinary sodium-to-potassium (Na/K) ratio, has been recently suggested to be useful to improve dietary habits. Vegetable juices are an easy way to consume vegetable-derived ingredients. This study aimed to examine effects of an intervention combining regular monitoring of these dietary biomarkers and provision of vegetable juices on values of the dietary biomarkers and metabolic syndrome components. Methods: Mongolian adults with body mass index (BMI) ≧ 25 living in Ulaanbaatar (n = 94), were randomly allocated to control, monitoring, and monitoring + vegetable juice groups. During the 8-weeks intervention, the monitoring and monitoring + vegetable juice groups were monitored their dietary biomarkers every two weeks, and the monitoring + vegetable juice group was additionally provided with vegetable juice every day. Changes in dietary biomarkers and metabolic syndrome components before and after intervention were compared among the three groups. Results: Through the intervention, the monitoring + vegetable juice group showed significantly increase in skin carotenoid level (+1.72), decrease in urinary Na/K ratio (-0.80 mol/mol), and decrease in waist circumference (-2.63 cm) compared to the control group (+0.28, +0.45, and +0.22, respectively). The combination of the monitoring dietary biomarkers and providing vegetable juice was suggested to be effective in improving dietary habits and metabolic syndrome components including waist circumference in Mongolian adults with an overweight BMI.
