A Study about Discovery of Critical Food Consumption Patterns Linked with Lifestyle Diseases using Data Mining Methods

Background: To date, the analysis of the implications of dietary patterns on lifestyle diseases is based on data coming either from clinical studies or food surveys, both comprised of a limited number of participants. This article demonstrates that linking big data from a grocery store sales database with demographical and health data by using data mining tools such as classification and association rules is a powerful way to determine if a specific population subgroup is at particular risk for developing a lifestyle disease based on its food consumption patterns. Objective: The objective of the study was to link big data from grocery store sales with demographic and health data to discover critical food consumption patterns linked with lifestyle diseases known to be strongly tied with food consumption.