Food Habits and Cardiovascular Health Status in Adult Melbourne Chinese

This thesis deals with the research into the dietary habits and cardiovascular health status of a representative sample of ethnic Chinese in the Melbourne Metropolitan area and the subsequent examination of the intra-population correlations between food intake patters and preventable cardiovascular risk factors.

The 547 study subjects ages 25 years and over were members of Chinese households randomly selected from the Melbourne telephone directory using a presumptive Chinese surname list. Household participation rate was 72.6%. More than 95% of the study subjects were immigrants to Australia, having been born in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Comparisons were made with a representative sample (electoral roll) of Australian-at-large derived from the National heart Foundation of Australia surveys of 1983 and 1989.