ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Determining Relationship between Diet Quality Index (DQI) and Body Mass Index (BMI) among Undergraduate University Students :; A Cross-Sectional Study from Pakistan
Provisionally accepted
Umar Farooq1
Maryyam Nisar1Jawaria Jawid1
Syeda Andleeb Zahra Hamdani1Zainab Khalid1Juweria Abid1*Syed Hassan Bin Usman Shah2
Abdul Momin Rizwan Ahmad3*- 1National University of Medical Sciences, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
- 2PRIME Consulting, Islamabad, Pakistan
- 3University of York, York, United Kingdom
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Abstract Introduction: Diet Quality Index-International (DQI-I) is a validated tool to assess diet quality and formulate evidence-based strategies to alleviate the risk of nutritional problems. Objective: The objective of the current study was to assess the diet quality and its relationship with body mass index in a Pakistani University students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the National University of Medical Sciences (NUMS), Rawalpindi, by incorporating 221 healthy undergraduate university students of both genders aged 19-25 years. Among the study population, a semi-quantitative questionnaire containing modified Diet Quality Questionnaire (DQQ) was administered to record the desired parameters including socio-demographics, anthropometrics, 24-hour dietary recall and average number of daily portions consumed. The collected responses were analyzed with SPSS version 27.0 by applying discriminant analysis and one way ANOVA to find out the possible association between desired variables such as DQI, BMI and NCDs risk. Results: Out of the study participants, 32% had moderate and 34% had high diet quality calculated in terms of DQI scores with the mean score of 52.74± 9.34 lying in the moderate category. However, NCD risk was recorded with mean value of 2.74± 2.08 representing that 49% were categorized under low risk, 42% under moderate risk and 9% under high risk. A significant association (p-value <0.005) (p <0.05) was observed between DQI and BMI and a non-significant association (p-value >0.005) (p >0.05) between BMI and NCD-risk. Students with high diet quality were more likely to have normal nutritional status as compared to those with average scores. Conclusion: Higher DQI scores were found to be significantly associated with the normal range scores of BMI among university students highlighting the key influence of diet quality upon nutritional status.
Keywords: diet quality, Diet Quality Index (DQI), Body mass index (BMI), NCD-risk, Cardio-metabolic profile, university students
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Farooq, Nisar, Jawid, Hamdani, Khalid, Abid, Shah and Ahmad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Juweria Abid
Abdul Momin Rizwan Ahmad
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