Goal:

To evaluate the overall diet quality of the nursing mothers using the Healthy Eating Index as an instrument.

Methods:

We carried out a cross-sectional-observational-epidemiological study using as data collection instrument a semi-structured questionnaire to characterize the sample and the habitual intake reminder. The diet quality was evaluated through the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) validated to the Brazilian population. For the analysis, we estimated the means and standard deviations, the medians and interquartile ranges of the HEI total and of each component. We used the Kolmogorov-Sminorv test to verify the normality of the data. HEI total score averages by groups according to socio-demographic, nutritional and obstetric variables were assessed using Student's t-tests, ANOVA and Tukey's “post hoc” test.

Results:

A total of 106 nursing mothers with a mean HEI score of 64.36 ± 10.68 were studied. Foods from the group of total fruit, whole fruit, total cereal, whole cereal and milk and dairy products were the components of HEI of the nursing mothers with lower scores, and with a higher frequency of minimum score. It was possible to observe a low intake of total fruits, whole fruits, total cereals, whole cereal and milk and dairy products. Comparing the means and medians of the total HEI score with the demographic, socioeconomic, nutritional and obstetric variables of the nursing mothers, we observed that women with 12 or more years of completed study had a significantly higher mean in relation to the less educated mothers.

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