Background: Obesity is a challenge for healthcare provider especially in the Asian region. Even though Malaysia focuses on better quality of life, Malaysia has not been exempted from this problem. Despite many countermeasures taken, the dietary habits during meals such as drinking plain water, eating fruits and chewing frequencies are somehow not highlighted for countering the obesity problem. This study focuses on the association between the dietary habits during meal and obesity status among Malaysian adults. Materials and Methods: This study was part of the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey (MANS 2014), a nationwide cross- sectional study focusing on Malaysian adults aged 18 to 59 years old. The sampling method used was a multistage stratified sampling based on enumeration blocks provided by the Department of Statistics Malaysia. 4044 selected living quarters from the enumeration blocks were selected. Time frame for the data collection was initiated in Mac 2014 and ended in May 2014. Questionnaire on dietary habits during meals was asked in face-to-face interviews and anthropometry measurement was taken by trained research assistant. All the data were analysed using SPSS version 19.0. Result: 3574 adults completed the survey with response rate of 88.4%. Twenty percent from total adults considered to either be obese or have abdominal obesity. Based on descriptive analysis, about 68% of the abdominal obesity and obese adults chewed less than 20 times during meal, 57% of abdominal obesity adults drank plain water after their main meal compared to 58% obese adults and 67% of abdominal obesity adults ate fruits after their main meal compared to 66% of obese adults. After being adjusted for age, gender and other sociodemographic variables, the results showed adults who did not know their own chewing frequencies had a chance to develop 1.9 times for obesity and 2.3 times for abdominal obesity. Moreover, adults who chew less than 20 times had a 1.9 times chance of developing abdominal obesity. Conclusion: These data indicated that increasing the number of chews before swallowing might be a behavioural strategy to reduce food intake and potentially aid body-weight management. It would suggest that education on good food habits consumption to apply may be important to counter the obesity problem among Malaysian adults.

The prevalence of obesity has increased dramatically and is now a global public health concern. This study examined trends in mean body mass index (BMI), mean waist circumference (WC) and prevalence of overweight, obesity and abdominal obesity (AO) among Malaysian adults obtained from the National Health and Morbidity Surveys (NHMS) in 2006, 2011 and 2015. These cross-sectional population based survey applied a two-stage stratified sampling design provided data on household members aged 18 years and above. Face-to face interviewed and anthropometric measurements, including weight, height and waist circumference (WC) were collected. Age-adjusted mean BMI is significantly increased from 24.6 kg/m2 in 2006 to 25.7 kg/m2 in 2015 (p <0.001), while age-adjusted mean WC increased from 81.9 cm to 85.7 cm during the same period of time. Prevalence of overweight significantly increases from 28.3% to 31.3% (p <0.001), that of obesity from 13.2% to 19.1% (p <0.001) and that of AO, the largest, from 39.1% to 51.0% (p <0.001). The prevalence of obesity and, in particular, abdominal obesity among Malaysian adults has increased in all age groups over the past 10 years. Thus, there is an urgent need to determine the factors associated with obesity and abdominal obesity towards developing a national program to prevent deleterious obesity-related health outcomes.