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Associations of ultra-processed food and drink products with asthma and wheezing among Brazilian adolescents
In this 2018 study, Melo et al. inspected the diet of Brazilian adolescents and assessed the relationship between the consumption of ultra-processed foods with presence of asthma and wheezing. The researchers focused on the number of ultra-processed products eaten in the past 7 days including sweet biscuits, salty biscuits, ultra-processed meats, sweets/candies, soft drinks, and packaged snacks. The results indicated that intake of sweets/candies and ultra-processed meats were associated with the number of asthmatics and appeared to correlate with presence of wheezing in the past 12 months. In addition, the ultra-processed consumption score (a combination of several scores corresponding to the weekly frequency intake of each ultra-processed product) was positively linked with the prevalence of asthma and wheezing in a dose-response manner. Moreover, it was found that participants with the highest ultra-processed consumption scores (top quintile) were more likely to have asthma and reported wheezing than those with the lowest consumption scores (by 27% and 42%, respectively). To conclude, increased intake of ultra-processed foods corresponded to more cases of asthma and wheezing in Brazilian adolescents. [NPID: diet, adolescence, obesity, Brazil, adolescence, asthma, processed foods]
Year: 2018
