Association of Food Intake with Sleep Durations in Adolescents from a Capital City in Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

(1) Background: During adolescence, there are significant changes in food consumption, such as reducing the consumption of in natura or minimally processed foods and increasing the consumption of ultra-processed foods. Thus, eating habits can influence sleep duration and, consequently, affect the quality of life of young people. This study thus aims to estimate the association of consumption of in natura or minimally processed, processed, and ultra-processed foods with sleep durations in adolescents. (2) Methods: This is a cross-sectional study including 964 adolescents (18 to 19 years old) from the 1997 to 1998 birth cohort in São Luís, Maranhão. Food consumption was assessed using the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and stratified based on the NOVA classification. Sleep duration was verified using accelerometry in hours. The analysis of the association between the consumption of in natura or minimally processed, processedand ultra-processed foods with sleep durations in adolescents used crude and adjusted linear regression (by gender, age, skin color, education, economic class, work, consumption of alcohol, smoking, screen time, physical activity, use of illicit drugs, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and lean and fat mass). A directed acyclic graph (DAG) was used to determine the minimum set of adjustment factors. (3) Results: Of the 964 individuals evaluated, 52.0% were female. The mean sleep duration was 6 h (± 0.95). In the crude and adjusted analyses, no association was observed between food consumption according to the degree of processing and adolescent sleep durations. (4) Conclusion: There was no association between the consumption of in natura or minimally processed, processed, and ultra-processed foods with sleep durations.