Health of lay-off survivors: Association between work stress and diet quality

Purpose: To examine the effect of work stress on diet quality among workers of manufacturing facilities undergoing major re-structuring and lay-offs. Work stress has been linked to metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and obesity but its effect on diet quality has not been reported. Methods: Baseline data on 2783 employees from a group-randomized weight gain prevention intervention in Western New York were analyzed. Diet quality was operationalized as number of servings of fruits and vegetables/day (FV) based on a validated food frequency questionnaire. Work stress was defined as reporting being in the lowest tertile of work social support and having job strain (high job demands and low job control according to the demand/control model), based on data from the Job Content Questionnaire. Mixed model analysis was used with worksite as a random effect. Age, education, income, smoking status, BMI, race, and marital status were included in the model. Results: Among this sample of mostly White (90.5%), male (63%) relatively well educated (78% with more than secondary education) employees with a median length of employment of 25 years, 21% reported high job strain and a mean FV intake of 1.7 (SD=1.24) servings/day. The adjusted data suggest that high work stress is negatively associated with FV intake (ß = -0.367, p=0.013). Current smoking status, education, and age are also associated with FV intake. Conclusions: Although these results need replication, they suggest that diet quality might be affected by work stress and adds to the sparse literature on the health of down-sizing survivors.