Does dietary health education reach only the privileged? The Stanford Three Community Study.

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Abstract
The relationship of selected social factors to diet, weight and plasma cholesterol was studied in one control and two treatment towns before and after a 3-year, bilingual, mass-media health education program. Spanish-speaking persons reported higher dietary cholesterol and saturated fat than English-speaking participants at baseline, and this remained true after adjusting for the confounding influence of socioeconomic status (SES). Obesity was also more prevalent in Spanish-language and low-SES groups, but plasma cholesterol was not related to these sociodemographic factors. Over the 3 years of the education program, all groups reported 20-40% decreases in dietary cholesterol and saturated fat. These decreases were as large in low-SES groups as in high-SES groups; Spanish-speaking participants reported significantly greater decreases in dietary saturated fat (p = 0.02). Weight change was not related to either SES or language group, but change in plasma cholesterol was marginally more favorable in Spanish-speaking subjects (p = 0.06).