We aimed to validate in-body bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) measures with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as reference and describe the body composition (BC) profiling of Tibetan adults.

This cross-sectional study included 855 participants (391 men and 464 women). Correlation and Bland–Altman analyses were performed for method agreement of in-body BIA and DXA. BC were described by obesity and metabolic status.

In-body BIA and DXA have not been employed to characterise the BC of the Tibetan population living in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau.

A total of 855 Tibetan adults, including 391 men and 464 women, were enrolled in the study.

Concordance correlation coefficient for total fat mass (FM) and total lean mass (LM) between in-body BIA and DXA were 0·91 and 0·89. The bias of in-body BIA for percentages of total FM and total LM was 0·91 % (2·46 %) and –1·74 % (–2·80 %) compared with DXA, respectively. Absolute limits of agreement were wider for total FM in obese men and women and for total LM in overweight men than their counterparts. Gradience in the distribution of total and regional FM content was observed across different BMI categories and its combinations with waist circumference and metabolic status.

In-body BIA and DXA provided overall good agreement at the group level in Tibetan adults, but the agreement was inferior in participants being overweight or obese.

American diets are increasingly based on ultra-processed foods (UPF). Current research, particularly on socio-economic differentials, is lacking. This study aimed to provide an updated examination of US household purchases of UPF and how this differs by race–ethnicity, household income and household education.

The NielsenIQ Consumer Panel 2020 was utilised for analysis. Each food and beverage product purchased by US households was assigned a level of processing under the Nova level of processing classification system. The volume of UPF purchased overall and by food group was determined for each Nova processing group and examined by race–ethnicity, education and income. Results were stratified by race–ethnicity within each income group. A P value < 0·0001 was considered significant.

This study analysed data from the Nielsen IQ Consumer Panel 2020 which recorded household food purchases in the USA.

The Nielsen IQ Homescan Consumer Panel is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of around 35 000 and 60 000 US households.

Of 33 054 687 products purchased by 59 939 US households in 2020, 48 % of foods and 38 % of beverages were considered UPF. Categories with the highest proportion of purchases deriving from UPF included carbonated soft drinks (90 %), mixed dishes and soups (81 %) and sweets and snacks (71 %). Slightly higher but statistically significant proportions of UPF purchases occurred in the lowest income and education groups and among non-Hispanic whites.

It is concerning that household purchases of UPF in the USA are high. Policies that reduce consumption of UPF may help reduce diet-related health inequalities.

Childhood obesity is increasing in many countries, including Kuwait. Currently, adiposity is most commonly assessed from simple anthropometric measurements, e.g. height and weight or combined as body mass index (BMI). This is despite these surrogate measurements being poor indices of adiposity. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a popular method for the assessment of body composition providing a measurement of adiposity as absolute fat mass (FM) or FM expressed as a percentage of body weight (%BF). BIA is, however, an indirect predictive method. This study developed a BIA-based prediction equation for body composition assessment in Kuwaiti children and, additionally, a prediction equation for %BF based on sum of skin-fold (SSF) thickness measurements.

A cross-sectional design was used with primary school recruitment.

School population in Kuwait City; in-clinic assessments.

158 Kuwaiti children aged 7–9 years. Body composition assessed using bioimpedance spectroscopy and skin-folds with prediction equations generate against deuterium dilution measurement of total body water and fat-free mass (FFM) as reference.

The newly developed and cross-validated BIA equation predicted FFM with minimal bias (< 1%) and acceptable 2 sd limits of agreement (±1·6 kg equivalent to ±10%) improving on the predictive performance of comparable published equations. Similarly, SSF predicted %BF with small bias (0·2 %BF) but relatively wide limits of agreement (±7 %BF).

These new equations are suitable for practical use for nutritional assessment in Kuwaiti children, particularly in epidemiological or public health settings although their applicability in other populations requires further research.

Understanding country-level nutrition intake is crucial to global nutritional policies that aim to reduce disparities and relevant disease burdens. Still, there are limited numbers of studies using clustering techniques to analyse the recent Global Dietary Database (GDD). This study aims to extend an existing multivariate time series (MTS) clustering algorithm to allow for greater customisability and provide the first cluster analysis of the GDD to explore temporal trends in country-level nutrition profiles (1990–2018).

Trends in sugar-sweetened beverage intake and nutritional deficiency were explored using the newly developed programme ‘MTSclust’. Time series clustering algorithms are different from simple clustering approaches in their ability to appreciate temporal elements.

Nutritional and demographical data from 176 countries were analysed from the GDD.

Population representative samples of the 176 in the GDD.

In a three-class test specific to the domain, the MTSclust programme achieved a mean accuracy of 71·5 % (adjusted Rand Index [ARI] = 0·381) while the mean accuracy of a popular algorithm, DTWclust, was 58 % (ARI = 0·224). The clustering of nutritional deficiency and sugar-sweetened beverage intake identified several common trends among countries and found that these did not change by demographics. MTS clustering demonstrated a global convergence towards a Western diet.

While global nutrition trends are associated with geography, demographic variables such as sex and age are less influential to the trends of certain nutrition intake. The literature could be further supplemented by applying outcome-guided methods to explore how these trends link to disease burdens.

Increased out-of-home consumption may elevate sodium (Na) intake, but self-reported dietary assessments limit evidence. This study explored associations between neighbourhood exposure to fast-food and sit-down restaurants and estimated 24-hour urinary Na excretion.

A cross-sectional analysis from the ORISCAV-LUX 2 study (2016–2017). 24-hour urinary Na was estimated from a morning spot urine sample using the INTERSALT formula. Spatial access to fast-food and sit-down restaurants was derived from GIS data around participants’ addresses within 800-m and 1000-m road network buffers by summing up the inverse of the road network distance between their residential address and all restaurants within the corresponding buffer size. Multi-adjusted linear models were used to assess the association between spatial access to restaurants and estimated 24-hour urinary Na excretion.

Luxembourg

Urban adults age over 18 years (n 464).

Fast-food and sit-down restaurants accounted for 58·5 % of total food outlets. Mean 24-hour urinary Na excretion was 3564 mg/d for men and 2493 mg/d for women. Health-conscious eating habits moderated associations between spatial access to fast-food and sit-down restaurants and Na excretion. For participants who did not attach great importance to having a balanced diet, greater spatial access to restaurants, combining both density and accessibility, was associated with increased urinary Na excretion at 800 m (βhighvslow = 259, 95 % CI: 47, 488) and 1000 m (βhighvslow = 270, 95 % CI: 21, 520).

Neighbourhood exposure to fast-food and sit-down restaurants influences Na intake, especially among individuals with less health-conscious eating habits, potentially exacerbating diet-related health disparities.

To map out evidence on instruments for evaluating organisational food environments of workplaces and the components and dimensions considered in the identified instruments.

A scoping review that includes studies published as of January 2005, the year of publication of the model developed by Glanz et al. (2005). The databases consulted were PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Scopus and Google Scholar until November 2024, without language restrictions. Studies were included if they evaluated the food environment of workplaces such as companies/factories, universities/post-secondary institutions/technical colleges and hospitals/health care units. The conceptual model of Castro and Canella (2022), considering its components and dimensions, was used to synthesise the data.

After a full reading, fifty-four articles were selected. Most were conducted in the United States and Brazil, although there were studies from sixteen countries. A total of thirty-six instruments were identified: nineteen were used in universities, eight in hospitals, and eleven in companies. No instrument included all components and dimensions of the conceptual model; however, three instruments included most of them. The most evaluated component was the internal level of eating spaces, and the most evaluated dimensions were the availability and quality of foods/beverages in eating spaces. Of the thirty-six instruments, twenty-nine reported some measure of validity or reproducibility. The limitation most reported by the studies was the non-generaliation of results because samples are limited.

Evaluations of the organisational food environment of workplaces can be used for monitoring, planning interventions and formulating public policies for such places, thereby enhancing workers’ health.

To explore the information available in school food purchase data and ascertain the potential to assess pupils’ dietary intakes. The proportion of purchased food and drink items that were linked to (i) an Intake24 food group and (ii) a nutrient code from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) Databank was calculated.

Pupil-level food purchase data covering the whole school day were obtained. Each item purchased was linked to an Intake24 food group and an NDNS Nutrient Databank code. Depending on the level of detail provided, items may have been assigned both a food group and a nutrient code, a food group only or neither for items, which did not contain enough information about the type of food or drink purchased.

Five secondary schools in northeast England.

Secondary school pupils aged 11–16 years.

The data captured 119 125 purchases made by 3466 pupils. 92 % of item descriptions were assigned a food group, and this equated to 82 % of total purchases. 70 % were assigned an NDNS Databank nutrient code, which accounted for 60 % of total purchases. 8 % of items had insufficient information and did not have a food group or a nutrient code assigned.

The methodological challenges of collecting dietary data from pupils in the secondary school setting are significant. Purchase data offers an alternative, objective approach to collecting information on school food choices across the school day and for a large sample of pupils. With further development, the potential to use purchase data to assess intakes could be achieved.

We evaluated the impact of an established nutrition education intervention, ‘PhunkyFoods’ on food literacy, cooking skills and fruit and vegetable intake in primary school aged children.

A pre-registered cluster randomised controlled trial was used; the intervention group received the ‘PhunkyFoods’ programme and the wait-list control group received the usual school curriculum. Primary outcomes measured were differences in food literacy and cooking skills scores between the intervention and control arms after 12 months adjusted for baseline values.

The trial was undertaken in twenty-six primary schools in North Yorkshire, UK.

631 children aged 6–9 years participated (intervention n 307, control n 324) through assemblies, classroom activities and after-school clubs.

There were no significant effects of the intervention compared with control on food literacy, cooking skills, vegetable intake or fruit intake. Adjusting for baseline, the Food Literacy Total Score was 1·13 points lower in the intervention group than the control (95 % CI –2·87, 0·62, P = 0·2). The Cooking Skills Total Score was 0·86 lower in the intervention group compared with the control (95 % CI = –5·17, 3·45, P = 0·69). Girls scored 2·8 points higher than boys in cooking skills across the sample (95 % CI = 0·88, 4·82, P < 0·01).

The intervention did not result in improved food literacy or cooking skills, though sex effects on these outcomes were observed. More practical food preparation hours are needed in primary schools to improve the likelihood of an effect on outcomes.