Vlassopoulos A, Katidi A, Noutsos S, Kapsokefalou M. Precision Food Composition Data as a Tool to Decipher the Riddle of Ultra-Processed Foods and Nutritional Quality.
Foods 2024;
13:1259. [PMID:
38672931 PMCID:
PMC11049098 DOI:
10.3390/foods13081259]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2024] [Revised: 04/14/2024] [Accepted: 04/18/2024] [Indexed: 04/28/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Epidemiology supports a link between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and health, mediated mainly through the clustering of foods with suboptimal nutrient profiles within UPFs. However, successful NOVA categorization requires access to a food's ingredient list, which we hypothesized can impact both UPF identification and the link between processing and composition.
METHODS
Foods (n = 4851) in the HelTH branded food composition database were classified as NOVA1-4, with or without using the ingredient lists (generic and branded approach, respectively), to identify differences in NOVA classification (chi-square test) and the estimated average nutritional composition of each NOVA group (Kruskal-Willis U test).
RESULTS
Using the ingredients list increased UPF identification by 30%. More than 30% of foods commonly assumed to be minimally processed (NOVA1-plain dairy, frozen vegetables, etc.) were reclassified as UPFs when using ingredient lists. These reclassified foods, however, had nutritional compositions comparable to NOVA1 foods and better than UPFs for energy, fat, sugars, and sodium (p < 0.001). In fact, UPFs did not show a uniform nutritional composition covering foods from Nutri-Score A (~10%) to Nutri-Score E (~20%).
CONCLUSIONS
The assumption that all UPFs have the same unfavorable nutritional composition is challenged when NOVA is applied using the appropriate branded food composition database.
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