Dietary intake of Brazilian adolescents

Abstract

Objective: To analyse the dietary intake of Brazilian adolescents and investigate its association with sociodemographic factors as well as health-risk and healthprotective behaviours. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: The study was based on data supplied by the National Survey of Schoolchildren's Health (2012) on sociodemographic factors, dietary intake and health-risk and health-protective behaviours of schoolchildren in Brazil. A nutritional scale was elaborated combining markers of healthy and unhealthy diets. Poisson regression analysis was applied to investigate the association between the sociodemographic factors and regular intake (≥5 times/week) of selected foods; linear regression analysis was applied to investigate the association of sociodemographic and behavioural factors with nutritional scale score. Subjects: A total of 109 104 adolescents attending the ninth year of education at 2842 schools in Brazil. Results: Fewer than 30 % of the adolescents consumed raw or cooked vegetables on a regular basis, whereas more than one-third reported regular intake of sweets, soft drinks and sweet biscuits. Adolescents from the southern area and the oldest ones were those most exposed to inadequate dietary intake. The nutritional scale average score was higher in the students attending public school and exhibited a positive correlation with protective behaviours, such as being physically active, having meals with parents and eating breakfast, and a negative correlation with risk behaviours such as eating while studying or watching television and having smoked, drunk alcohol or used other drugs in the previous 30 d. Conclusions:The results indicate an association between undesirable nutritional habits and other risk behaviours among Brazilian adolescents. Keywords Adolescent health School Food consumption Eating behaviour Risk factorsAlthough chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) are a matter of great public health concern worldwide, they affect developing countries more significantly (1) . In Brazil, NCD cause approximately 70 % of deaths and the prevalence of their main risk factors has shown an unfavourable tendency. These facts make it necessary to implement surveillance programmes to form the basis of timely and strategic interventions (2) . Inadequate dietary habits stand out among the risk factors common to NCD as a whole. Surveys on the types of food available in Brazilian households conducted in the past three decades have shown a steady increase of ultraprocessed foods and a significant reduction of natural or minimally processed foods and cooking ingredients in all socio-economic classes and geographical regions (3,4) . That tendency is a serious cause for concern because some features intrinsic to ultra-processed foods (high energy density, free sugar, sodium, total fat and saturated fat; low protein and fibre) are associated with excessive weight gain and increased risk for NCD (5)(6)(7) . Although changes in dietary habits are required in all age ranges, adolescence should be a focus ...

Consumption of sugar-rich food products among Brazilian students:National School Health Survey (PeNSE 2012)

“…Although a gradient of prevalence of consumption of sugar-rich food products was not observed with increasing age, the findings of this study are in agreement with the current evidence that older adolescents have more autonomy and more opportunities to select and buy food outside the home, which mainly consists of calorie-rich products, such as sweets and soft drinks 14,30 .…”

“…29 . Moreover, a study that used data from PeNSE 2012 showed a poorer quality diet among girls compared with boys 30 , suggesting that Brazilian female adolescents are more exposed to inadequate food consumption 29,30 . The finding regarding the association gradient between a higher amount of time spent watching TV and more elevated consumption of sugar-rich food products among adolescents is also consistent with evidence from other studies 17,31,32,33,34 .…”

Fatores associados ao consumo da alimentação escolar por adolescentes no Brasil: resultados da PeNSE 2012

“…Foram consideradas variáveis preditoras: sexo, nível de escolaridade do pai, bens familiares (carro, telefone fixo, celular, número de banheiros em casa) e serviços (empregada doméstica e acesso à Internet em casa). Tal procedimento foi empregado anteriormente aos dados da PeNSE por Azeredo et al 2 .…”

“…Nesse sentido, em 2009, o Brasil realizou a primeira Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde do Escolar (PeNSE). Em 2012, a segunda edição da pesquisa, mostrou uma ingestão regular, ou seja, cinco vezes por semana, de doces (41,3%), refrigerantes (33,3%), biscoitos doces (32,5%) e frutas (29,8%), vegetais cozidos (13,5%), vegetais crus (26,6%) apontando ingestão regular de alimentos não saudáveis e baixo de alimentos saudáveis 2,3 .…”

Risk Behaviour Patterns for Chronic Diseases and Associated Factors Among Adolescents

“…As in other studies (31,33), older adolescents spent more time in sedentary activities, and for this population this time increased linearly with age. Some other studies have shown that unhealthy food consumption increases with age among adolescents (34,35). This result can be explained by the fact that, as age increases, adolescents experience a gradual increase in their autonomy and a progressive reduction of parental influence in their food choices.…”