Choices compliance could lead to tremendous improvements in Brazilian diets
April 3th, 2013
Replacing typical Brazilian foods by Choices products may improve Brazilian diets by substantially decreasing unfavorable nutrients while increasing dietary fiber. This appeared from a modeling study by the Brazilian scientists Wenzel de Menezes (see picture) et al. from the University of Sao Paulo, that was recently published in Food Chemistry. Replacing typical products from the Brazilian menu by products complying to the Choices criteria, resulted in a decrease of 52% in saturated fatty acids, 92% of trans fatty acids, 14% of energy and 47% of sodium. Dietary fiber increased by 87%. As data on key nutrients were incomplete in the Brazilian food composition database, the scientists created a new database by collecting information from food labels, resulting in a database of 1720 industrialized products. Data on sugar or added sugar were not sufficiently available to evaluate.
This Brazilian study is the fourth study addressing the potential impact of Choices on nutrient intakes. Two of the earlier studies (Roodenburg et al. 2009 and Temme et al. 2011) relied on data from The Netherlands, while one included data from seven different countries worldwide (Roodenburg et al. 2011).
All these studies show that nutrient intakes would move substantially into a favourable direction when typical menus are replaced by Choices compliant menus, although the size of the effect depends on the local situation. Also, they show that the Choices criteria are equally applicable in non-European countries like Brazil, even without the adaptations that are allowed to adjust for local food patterns.
References
EW de Menezes et al. (2013). Application of Choices criteria in Brazil: impact on nutrient intake and adequacy of food products in relation to compounds associated with the risk of non-transmissible chronic diseases. Food Chemistry (2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.02.031
A. Roodenburg et al. (2009). Potential impact of the Choices Programme on nutrient intakes in the Dutch Population. Nutrition Bulletin, 34/3: 318-23.
AJC Roodenburg et al. (2011). Potential effects of nutrient profiles on nutrient intakes in the Netherlands, Greece, Spain, USA, Israel, China and South-Africa. PLoS ONE 6 (2).
EHM Temme et al. (2011). Impact of foods with health logo on saturated fat, sodium and sugar intake of young Dutch adults. Public Health Nutrition 14 (4): 635-644.