Dietary Taurine and Nutrient Intake and Dietary Quality by Alcohol Consumption Level in Korean Male College Students - Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology - page 116

Abbreviations

BMI Body mass index

NAR Nutrient adequacy ratio

MAR Mean adequacy ratio

ND Nutrient density

13.1 Introduction

A light alcohol consumption may not be harmful but heavy alcohol consumption is
related to various negative consequences such as the reduced brain mass, neuronal
loss, and impairment of cognitive and physical functions (Ham and Hope 2003 ) .
Dietary taurine (2-aminoethane sulfonic acid) intake may play an important role in
physical and psychological aspect. Recent findings also imply the protective effect of
taurine related to alcohol-induced problems. Taurine supplementation was neuroprotec-
tive against ethanol-induced apoptosis in cells (Taranukhin et al. 2010 ) and had a pre-
ventive role by antagonizing the effects induced by alcohol (Rosemberg et al. 2012 ) .
There are many previous reports about the relationship between alcohol consumption
and nutrient intake (Rittmueller et al. 2012 ; Rosemberg et al. 2012 ; Sieri et al. 2009 ) .
However, there exists only a limited amount of studies about the relationship between
taurine intake and alcohol consumption. The purpose of this study is to investigate dif-
ference of dietary intake of nutrients including taurine, and the dietary quality in Korean
male college students that were divided according to their alcohol consumption level.

13.2 Methods

13.2.1 Subjects

The subjects were male college students residing in the Incheon area and attending
a nutrition-related nonmajor class via the Internet. The subjects were divided into
two groups by alcohol consumption level: heavy drinking group (average drinking
over 5 cans (355 ml) of beer or 7 shots (45 ml) of soju) and light drinking group
(average drinking less than 5 cans of beer or 7 shots of soju or not drinking any
alcohol at all at one time during the previous month).

13.2.2 General Characteristics and Body Composition

Questions for general characteristics included three items such as age, type of resi-
dence, and pocket money. The height of subjects was measured with a stadiometer.