ABSTRACT Prenatal diet affects maternal and child health; however, adherence to dietary guidelines in pregnancy is low. This cross‐sectional study aimed to describe overall diet quality and to examine relationships between socioeconomic factors and diet quality in a sample of Australian pregnant women. Participants ( n = 1580) completed an online survey and self‐reported usual dietary intake (via a food frequency questionnaire FFQ) and socioeconomic factors, including highest educational attainment, income, perception of overall financial situation, residential postcode for area‐level socioeconomic status (SES), stressful life events, and perceived social support. FFQ responses were converted to an overall diet quality score using the Dietary Guidelines Index 2013 (DGI‐13) criteria. Latent class analysis was used to identify groups of stressful life events, and multiple linear regression models examined associations between the socioeconomic factors and DGI‐13 score. Overall, adherence to dietary guidelines and prenatal diet quality were low. The mean DGI‐13 score was 76.1 (SD 13.7) out of a maximum possible score of 130. All socioeconomic factors were significantly associated with DGI‐13 score. For all socioeconomic factors except the perceived social support score, the lowest/most disadvantaged categories and middle/medium categories were associated with clinically important reductions of 5–9 points and 3–6 points, respectively, indicating a social gradient in diet quality. There is a need to improve prenatal diet quality among all women. However, there is an urgent need for systems‐level interventions and policy change that target those with lower SES backgrounds to reduce dietary and health inequities.
Whiteoak et al. (Thu,) studied this question.