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 Tracking airline employees in Finland, researchers found that people
who worked varying shifts and night shifts on the ground consumed
more fat and fewer vegetables and fruits than daytime ground
personnel and in-flight workers.
“The occupational health care unit personnel had noticed that many
shift workers had health risks,” said Katri Hemio, a nutritionist at
the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki who led
the study. “In addition, 70 percent of airline workers were working
in shifts and most of them had irregular work hours,” she said.
“This makes the population vulnerable to the potential risks of
shift work and also very suitable for studying (the) risks,” Hemio
said.
Previous research has shown that shift workers have an increased
risk for cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome and type 2
diabetes, Hemio and coauthors note in Occupational and Environmental
Medicine.
Shift workers also tend to gain more weight, the more they work the
varying schedules. Night shift workers also sleep less, which can
cause metabolic and cardiovascular problems, the authors point out.
The new study included 1,478 airline employees in an airline
screening and prevention program for chronic diseases from 2006 to
2009. A little over half were men. Some were day workers, some were
shift workers who did not work on aircraft, and some were in-flight
employees.
Health check-ups at the beginning of the study included diabetes
risk screening, lab tests, physical measurements and a questionnaire
on lifestyle, work and sleeping habits. Those at risk for diabetes
also completed a 16-item questionnaire on how many and what types of
meals they ate daily and were offered lifestyle counseling.
Health check-ups were repeated two and a half years later, when all
participants completed the questionnaire again.
The male employees who worked shifts during the study period, mainly
doing aircraft or customer service, were less likely to eat at least
one portion of vegetables per day than either day or in-flight shift
workers.
Women shift workers got 12.6 percent of their daily calories from
saturated fat, compared to day workers’ 12.2 percent. Female
in-flight and non-flight shift workers also used more high-fat milk
products than day workers.
Male shift workers consumed more calories from fat (33 percent) and
saturated fat (12 percent) than the other two groups. In-flight male
workers consumed the lowest proportion of fat calories (31.7
percent) and saturated fat calories (11.6 percent).
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More in-flight and day workers had academic or polytechnic degrees
than the shift workers, the study authors note.
“One result surprised us . . . we found that education level did not
affect the results,” Hemio told Reuters Health. “It seems that shift
work itself strongly affects workers’ eating habits.”
The female shift workers also felt more stressed and led a more
sedentary lifestyle than the other women employees. The in-flight
workers had healthier metabolisms, according to the lab tests.
“The most important message to other shift workers is that they
should be aware of increased risk for chronic diseases and that
healthy nutrition may lower the risk,” Hemio said.
Teresa Fung, a nutritional epidemiologist at Simmons College and
Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who has also worked as a
dietician, called the study “stimulating,” but said it brought up
more questions than answers.
“The instrument they used to find out what they’re eating assesses
food intake all day long . . . not only what they’re eating at work,
but also what they’re eating at home,” Fung said. “So I would be
very curious to find out what they are eating when they are not at
work.”
Fung said workplace vending machines should offer healthier food for
workers, refrigerators should be available for healthier foods
brought from home and employees should be educated on healthy diets.
“People do a fair amount of eating while at work, so availability is
an issue,” Fung said.
SOURCE: http://bmj.co/1OXYytZ Occupational and Environmental
Medicine, online April 20, 2015.
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