Ultra-Processed Food Consumption Among Chilean Preschoolers Is Associated With Diets Promoting Non-communicable Diseases
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: In adults, intake of ultra-processed foods (UPF) has been linked with poor diets and adverse health outcomes. In young children, evidence is scarcer but suggests a higher dietary share of UPF. Objective: To quantify the intake of UPF and its association with the nutrient composition of the diet in a sample of preschoolers in Santiago, Chile. Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of dietary data (24-h recall survey) from 960 preschoolers. Foods were categorized according to the extent and purpose of processing (NOVA classification) and participants were classified in quintiles of UPF intake. We explored the associations between UPF intake (% of the total energy) and intake of nutrients of concern for non-communicable disease development (carbohydrates, total sugars, fats, and sodium), and nutrients for promotion (proteins, polyunsaturated fats, iron, calcium, zinc, vitamins A, D, C, and B 12 , folate, and fiber) using multivariate regression after controlling for covariates. Results: UPF constituted 49% of the total energy intake. Preschoolers with higher intake consumed more energy, saturated and monounsaturated fats, carbohydrates, total sugars, and vitamin D, compared to preschoolers in the lowest quintile of UPF intake. In contrast, UPF intake was negatively associated with the consumption of proteins, polyunsaturated fats, fiber, zinc, vitamin A, and sodium ( p < 0.05). Conclusion: In Chilean preschoolers, UPF was the primary source of energy intake. The dietary share of UPF was associated with the nutrient composition of the diet. Improving children's diet should consider not only promoting healthy food consumption but also limiting UPF consumption.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".