Associação entre consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados em adolescentes e condições sociodemográficas

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relationship between food consumption according to the degree of processing and sociodemographic conditions in adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional study carried out with 72 adolescents aged 10 to 19 years of both sexes from a state school. The foods in the consumption frequency questionnaire were classified according to the degree of industrial processing as in natura or minimally processed, processed and ultra-processed. To verify the association between sociodemographic characteristics and food consumption was used Student's T test and Mann Whitney test. A significance level of α=0.05 was adopted. Results: Individual schildren under 15 years old have higher caloric consumption in foods from the in natura group (p=0.003) and lower in ultra-processed foodsin relation to the older ones (p=0.003). Adolescents with higher caloric intake also consume more ultra-processed foods. prevalence of consumption of processed foods is lower in all consumption tertiles. Conclusions: The sociodemographic condition that showed a relationship with the consumption of ultra-processed foods was the age group of adolescents and the higher caloric consumption indicates the higher consumption of ultra-processed foods.