Abstract
The present study aimed to evaluate the nutrient profile of packaged foods marketed in Brazil, giving insights into healthiness of the Brazilian supermarket packaged food environment, considering different food categories and levels of industrial food processing and presence of nutrition and health claims and marketing strategies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on the labels of pre-packed foods marketed in a home-shopping website. A stratified random sample (n = 335) was obtained to be analysed by four nutrient profile models: Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion, UK Nutrient Profile from the Food Standards Agency, Nutrient profile model from Pan American Health Organization, and Nutrition Score from Unilever Food & Health Research (Unilever). Overall, the models shown agreement, besides some differences in the levels of approval. Ultra-processed foods were less healthy. Pass rates for products carrying nutrition and/or health claims have evidenced the presence of these claims may be indicative of slightly better nutritional quality. This did not apply for products with and without marketing techniques. These findings highlight the need for improvement of the supermarket packaged food environment in scenarios like Brazil by increasing efforts to reformulate products to make them healthier, together with appropriate food labelling regulation.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The authors thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and Fundacão de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) for the financial support.
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RCP conceived the research, fetched and analyzed data, and wrote the manuscprit; JDSC conceived the research, supervised the work, and edited the manuscript; MCAP conceived the research, co-supervised the work, and edited the manuscript.
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Pereira, R.C., Souza Carneiro, J. & de Angelis Pereira, M.C. Evaluating nutrition quality of packaged foods carrying claims and marketing techniques in Brazil using four nutrient profile models. J Food Sci Technol 59, 1520–1528 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-021-05162-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-021-05162-w