Abstract P563: Association of Regularly Skipping Meals With Employees’ Workplace Food Choices and Overall Dietary Quality

Introduction: Breakfast skipping has been associated with poor diet, obesity, and risk of diabetes, but less is known about skipping lunch and dinner. We hypothesized that regular meal skipping by employees is associated with less healthy workplace food purchases, poorer dietary quality, and higher body mass index (BMI). Methods: This is a secondary analysis of baseline data from 602 hospital employees who regularly purchased from workplace cafeterias and enrolled in a workplace health promotion study in 2016-18. Hospital cafeterias used traffic-light labels (green = healthy, yellow = less healthy, red = unhealthy) for all foods. We calculated a Healthy Purchasing Score (HPS) using 3 months of employees’ purchases and weighting the proportion of items purchased (red=0, yellow=0.5, green=1; range 0-1, higher=healthier purchases). Healthy Eating Index (HEI; range 0-100, higher=healthier diet) was estimated using 24-hour dietary recalls. Meal skipping frequency was self-reported via questionnaire. Linear regression analyses examined differences in HPS, HEI, and BMI by meal skipping frequency (never skip, 1-2 days/week, 3+days/week), adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity, education, job type, shift work, marital status, and number of purchases. Results: Participants’ mean age was 43.6 years; 79% (N=478) were female and 81% (N=488) white. Mean BMI was 28.3 kg/m 2 (SD: 6.5), and 63% (N=377) were overweight/obese. Mean number of items purchased was 146 (SD: 71); mean HPS was .69 (SD .14) and mean HEI was 60.4 (SD: 12.5). The table shows that frequent meal skippi was associated with less healthy purchases at work, and breakfast skipping was associated with lower dietary quality. Meal skipping was not associated with BMI. Conclusions: Employees who skipped meals purchased less healthy food at work and breakfast skippers had poorer overall dietary intake. Results suggest that meal skipping may be an important factor in unhealthy eating habits of employees and should be considered in workplace health promotion efforts.