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https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/eating-disorders/news/20110624/unhealthy-eating-habits-start-early

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June 24, 2011 -- Girls and boys who develop unhealthy eating or extreme dieting habits as adolescents are likely to carry those potentially dangerous weight control practices into adulthood.

A new study shows that more than half of teenage girls and one-third of teenage boys used unhealthy eating habits like fasting, skipping meals, or smoking more cigarettes to control their weight, and many continued these habits through young adulthood.

Researchers also found the number of young adolescents who used extreme weight control measures like taking diet pills, making themselves vomit, and using diuretics or laxatives increased as they entered adulthood from 8% to 20% among girls. These extreme measures increased from 2% to 7% from middle adolescence to middle young adulthood among boys.

"Given the growing concern about obesity, it is important to let young people know that dieting and disordered eating behaviors can be counterproductive to weight management," researcher Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, MPH, RD, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, says in a news release. "Young people concerned about their weight should be provided support for healthful eating and physical activity behaviors that can be implemented on a long-term basis, and should be steered away from the use of unhealthy weight control practices."

Unhealthy Eating Habits Linger

In the study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, researchers looked at the prevalence and persistence of unhealthy and extreme weight control practices and binge eating in a group of 2,287 adolescents who were followed for about 10 years. The participants included a younger group that started the study at age 12 and an older group that started at about age 16.

The study showed about half of the girls and a fourth of the boys reported dieting in the past year, and this number remained consistent from adolescence through young adulthood among girls. The number of boys dieting significantly increased from middle adolescence to middle young adulthood.

The prevalence of unhealthy weight control behaviors, such as fasting, eating very little food, using a food substitute (powder or special drink), skipping meals, and smoking more cigarettes, remained consistent among approximately one-third of males from adolescence to adulthood.

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June 24, 2011 -- Girls and boys who develop unhealthy eating or extreme dieting habits as adolescents are likely to carry those potentially dangerous weight control practices into adulthood. A new study shows that more than half of teenage girls and one-third of teenage boys used unhealthy eating habits like fasting, skipping meals, or smoking more cigarettes to control their weight, and many continued these habits through young adulthood.

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Teenager Eating Habits: Fix Unhealthy Behaviours

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Teenager Eating Habits: Fix Unhealthy Behaviours

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Let's face it, if you have a teenager in your house, you're probably starting to see some bad food habits.

From skipping breakfast to overeating at the end of the day (what I call back-loading), teens may go off the rails when they get a little freedom.

As a pediatric nutritionist who's worked with teens over the years, and as a mom who has raised four teens myself, I've seen what I consider the typical teenage diet.

While you may fret and worry about bad food habits, I know that much of the time unhealthy eating habits are anchored in normal teen development.

Other unhealthy eating signs, of course, are not.

For example, if you see the signs of an eating disorder, you should never consider this typical or normal. You should seek additional help.

In this article, I will review some of the common teenager eating habits I've seen that are counterproductive to their health, and highlight why they happen and what you can do about them.

Puberty, Growth Spurts and Teenager's Food

Before I get going, though, you need to understand what's going on during the teenage years because it has quite an influence on eating.

The teenage years are a time of heightened growth and development.

Puberty is in full swing, with both girls and boys growing at a rapid pace. The teenage growth spurt is characterized by increases in height, weight and social-emotional changes.

To say it's a roller-coaster is an understatement!

It helps if you know the signs of the typical teenage growth spurt, so you can be ready with more food. Because anytime there's an uptick in growth, an increased appetite follows.

When do girls stop growing?

Puberty for girls begins around age 10 years with menses starting around age 12 1/2.

Most girls finish the majority of their growth two years after they start their period, typically around age 14 or 15.

Read more about when females stop growing.

When do boys stop growing?

Boys begin puberty about two years later than girls, which is around age 12 to 13.

Boys grow for a longer period of time, and typically reach their peak height by age 18 years.

Read more details about when boys stop growing.

All this growing requires energy and nutrients. As such, nutrient needs and calorie requirements are at an all-time high, preparing the body for its last phase of growth.

It's no wonder teenager eating habits become a central focus!

Good Eating Habits of Teenagers

Obviously, you can support your teen through all this growth with good food and healthy eating habits.

An eating schedule for meals and snacks still works well with the teen, even though your teen may be drawn to eat outside your home.

This is where you'll have to draw the line and set rules around family meals and friend meals.

Healthy meal plans including nutritious foods such as lean protein sources, dairy (or non-dairy), fruits, vegetables and whole grains should anchor your teen's diet.

Of course, sweets and treats will be the lure. How to balance sweets will be a challenge, but I encourage you to make your home a health haven where your teen can get the nutrition he needs to grow well.

Last, being a good role model helps a lot.

Why do Teenagers Eat So Much?

It is normal for teens to eat a lot, especially boys.

They have the highest calorie requirements for growth than any other age or stage of childhood, some needing up to 3400 calories per day!

All these calories, protein and other nutrients support the dynamic, and energy-demanding process of growth.

How Often Should a Teen Eat?

I advise teens eat three meals each day and include at least one healthy snack per day.

If your teen is an athlete, he or she may need an additional snack or a 4th meal.

5 Bad Eating Habits in Teenagers

Unhealthy eating, whether related to unhealthy food choices, overeating or erratic timing can set a teen up for excessive hunger, fatigue, a lack of focus, unhealthy weight gain, and disordered eating.

Here are 5 common signs of bad eating in the teen:

1. Skipping Breakfast

Breakfast is often cited as "the most important meal of the day," and with several good reasons.

It gives children and teens a metabolic jump start, giving the body fuel to burn.

Breakfast also wakes up the brain for learning, and helps with appetite management throughout the day.

A high protein breakfast has been shown to help teens manage their appetite, body fat and prevent extra unhealthy weight gain.

I interviewed the researcher who did the studies on high protein breakfasts for teens on my podcast - take a listen!

Quick Fix

Yes, even my teens were crunched for time to eat in the morning. When your teen doesn't have the time to eat breakfast before he leaves for school there are a few things you can try:

1. Opt for a "grab-n-go" breakfast such as a mixture of dry cereal, raisins, and nuts, or a piece of fruit with a wedge of cheese.

2. Teens can drink their breakfast, with options such as fruit smoothies or milk-based breakfast drinks. Both provide vitamins and minerals in addition to calories and protein.

3. Check out my Fast & Nutritious Breakfasts for Athletes to spur some new ideas.

2. The Lunch Quandary: Bring, Buy, or Skip?

Lunch provides the nutrients your teen requires to continue learning at school.

Eating lunch also helps keep the appetite in check after school at the end of the day.

If your teen is an athlete, lunch is the fuel she will tap into during after-school practice.

Lunch offers up a few risks for bad food habits.

One, if your teen brings lunch, the priority will be on packing a healthy lunch that is easy and safe to store.

I've been challenged with my teen's lunch in the past with finding variety day after day.

Buying lunch at school can be challenging as well.

Some teens may only pick one or two items off the lunch line, not nearly meeting their nutritional needs. This may leave the teen under-fueled and hungry after school.

Other teens may choose unhealthy lunch options...day after day.

This may lead to poor nutrition and unhealthy weight gain.

Still, other teens will skip lunch all together. This is not good, or healthy, and may fuel more bad eating habits and challenges with disordered eating.

Quick Fix

You can teach and train your child to make healthy lunch choices.

1. Encourage your teen to select a variety of items from at least 3 food groups when packing or buying.

2. Include food groups such as dairy, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meat or protein.

3. Check out the lunch menu and plan ahead. This can be a useful strategy to help your teen make healthy choices and avoid the "surprise" lunch.

4. If packing lunch from home, veer off the sandwich path. Try microwaving a potato, sending in a chef salad, or assembling whole grain crackers with lean deli meat and cheese.

5. Round out any sandwich or entree with a piece of fresh fruit and a container of low-fat milk or yogurt (if not already packed).

6. Discourage skipping lunch at school!

Chances are, if your teen eats a good lunch at school, he won't be starving, then overeat, and clean out your refrigerator and pantry.

3. Not Getting Enough Fluids (or the Wrong Ones)

Tiredness or fatigue is a symptom of inadequate sleep, but they can also represent dehydration.

It's not uncommon for teens to be thirsty but misinterpret that thirst as hunger. These two feelings can be confused, especially in children.

Quick Fix

Be sure your teen is drinking at least 2 liters of fluid per day.

If he is playing a sport, he probably needs more.

A good rule of thumb to teach your teen is: If you feel thirsty, then you're behind on fluids.

Help your teen recognize thirst as dehydration and look for times during the day when he can increase his fluid intake.

Be picky with beverages. Sugar-sweetened drinks can be problematic for teens, causing unwanted weight gain if not balanced into the overall diet.

Instead, promote fluids such as water, milk, or flavored sparkling water.

Encourage your teen to lay off the caffeine, too. Is coffee bad for teens?

Not necessarily, but it can be addictive and at the least, it's dehydrating.

4. Snacking All Night Long

Many teens love to eat after dinner, and sometimes well into the evening.

Often, the food choices are less than healthy.

Hello, chips? Ice cream?

Obviously, this can be a recipe for eating too much and extra, unwanted weight gain.

Quick Fix

1. Make sure your teen knows the difference between true, physical hunger and head hunger. Head hunger makes you think you're hungry when what's driving the appetite is actually boredom, emotions or other.

2. If your teen is truly hungry, consider some of these healthier late night snacks.

5. Skipping Out on Fiber

Fiber is found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It's one of those "filling" nutrients, helping all kids feel full after eating a meal or snack containing it.

Yet, so many teens opt for drive-through food, or other unhealthy fare, and in doing so, they often miss out on fiber.

Quick Fix

1. Offer fruits and vegetables with meals, and have them easily available on the counter when your teen wants to nosh.

2. Swap refined grains found in cereal, bread, bagels, crackers and more for whole grain sources. Build up the dietary fiber and you may see less grazing and overeating!

How to Improve Diets for Teens

The best way to break poor eating habits is to return to a regular eating schedule, offer wholesome nutritious foods at mealtimes, encourage a morning breakfast and school lunch every day, and nag (just a little) about fluid and fiber intake.

These small steps can reinforce healthy eating habits for teenagers and can keep your teen healthy, energetic, and getting the nutrients he needs to grow into a healthy adult.

Need More Help with Teen Nutrition?

Check out our on demand library of workshops, classes and guidebooks to help parents like you raise good eaters.

Read Protein Powder for Kids: What Parents Need to Know

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Teenager Eating Habits: Fix Unhealthy Behaviors

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Teens can develop bad food habits like skipping meals. Learn the most common teenager eating habits, why they happen, and what you can do.

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Brainstorm Article Adolescents' Dietary Habits.

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Brainstorm Article Adolescents' Dietary Habits.

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How Teen Nutrition Affects Mental Health

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How Teen Nutrition Affects Mental Health

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The way that your teen eats now will also set the precedent for their diet going forward in life, so good teen nutrition is an important factor in long term health.
[lwptoc]

You know that nutrition is an important factor in your teen's physical health. Teenagers are developing rapidly, and their bodies need the nutrients that will help them develop strong bones and muscles, healthy skin, hardy immune systems, and more.

But you may not realize how important teen nutrition is to your child's mental health, both in the short term and in the long term.

Take a look at what you need to know about teen nutrition and how it affects their mental health.

Food and Mood

Most people understand, at least on an instinctive level, that some food has an almost immediate effect on mood. There are several reasons for this, some of which have little to do with the actual ingredients in the food.

Like most matters involved in both teen nutrition and mental health, it's a complicated subject.

A cookie or an ice cream sundae can give someone a temporary mood boost when they're feeling low. The treats are associated with feelings of safety and comfort, so they feel safe and comforted.

Depending on the actual ingredients of the cookie or sundae, there may also be a physical explanation with the positive feelings that are associated with the food.

Chocolate - especially dark chocolate - is a well-known mood booster.

It causes the release of endorphins - the same feel-good hormones associated with exercise. Chocolate also naturally contains some caffeine, which can make you feel more energetic, and some people might interpret that as an improvement in their mood.

And of course, both cookies and ice cream are liable to contain sugar, which triggers the release of dopamine in your brain, which makes you feel happier - at least until the dopamine drops and the effects wear off, leaving you craving more.

Choosing the Right Foods

The problem is that these mood-boosting sweets only have short-term positive effects on your mood, and in the long run, they can actually make things worse.

Sugar cravings combined with physical effects like bloating or mental effects like stress about overeating can actually make mood worse. And foods that actually have a more lasting effect on mood and mental health often don't work as quickly or dramatically as common unhealthy "comfort foods".

Plus, since it's usually high-fat or sugary foods that are used as treats, people often don't have the same mental associations with healthy mood-boosting foods as they do with unhealthy ones.

For example, foods that have plenty of vitamin D, like canned salmon, can increase serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood.

Deficiencies in serotonin are linked with various mood disorders including seasonal affective disorder (SAD). But for most people, a can of salmon just doesn't sound as comforting as a plate of pasta with cheese or a piece of cake. That's likely at least partly because they associate cheesy pasta with happy family dinners or cake with birthday celebrations.

Food-Related Mental Health Disorders

There are a variety of mental health disorders that directly concern what and how a person eats.

Today, many parents are familiar with anorexia nervosa, which is a mental health disorder that often begins in the teenage years. It involves the person with the disorder refusing to take in as much nutrition as their body needs, effectively starving themselves.

Bulimia is another common disorder in this family. Those affected undergo cycles of binging on food and then purging it, either by vomiting or through other means, like the use of diuretics and laxatives. Other common eating disorders include:

Binge-eating disorder

Purging disorder

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder

Most people think of eating disorders as a case of mental health affecting nutrition, not nutrition affecting mental health. But it may be more useful to think of it as a circle.

Teens who are eating in disordered ways may not be getting the nutrients they need for their bodies, but they're also not getting the right nutrients for their mental health. Not eating enough food or purging the food that they do eat can impair their abilities to make good decisions and contribute to depression.

Binging on unhealthy foods, with or without purging, can lead to stress about weight gain and mood imbalances due to dramatic spikes and dips in blood sugar, dopamine, and other factors.

Disordered eating is a mental health problem in and of itself, but it also contributes to other mental health issues.

Foods for Good Mental Health

There are foods that can contribute to better mental health. Foods that are high in omega-3 fatty acids, for example, can support brain function.

People who eat diets higher in oily fish have been found in studies to experience less depression than people who do not eat oily fish like salmon, sardines, mackerel, and anchovies.

Probiotic supplements have also been shown to correlate with decreased levels of depression in people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome. Whole grains contain vitamins that aid in the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin.

How a person eats matters as well - for example, people who eat breakfast regularly have fewer depressive symptoms than people who never eat or only sometimes eat breakfast, suggesting that the most important meal of the day benefits mood and mental health as well as physical health.

By the teen years, children are usually pretty clear about what foods they like and don't like. But it's not too late to add healthy nutrition habits and stop unhealthy ones.

Parents can help by making sure that they make healthy foods and snacks readily available, planning and preparing family meals, and ensuring that their teens are eating regularly and not overeating or skipping meals.

It can also help to cook creatively. Consciously work to create positive associations with healthy foods through shopping, meal planning, and food preparation.

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How Teen Nutrition Affects Mental Health

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The way that your teen eats now will also set the precedent for their diet going forward in life, so good teen nutrition is an important factor in long term health. [lwptoc] You know that nutrition is an important factor in your teen's physical health.

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How does our eating habits influence our life in the future?

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How does our eating habits influence our life in the future?

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Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing

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The food we eat gives our bodies the "information" and materials they need to function properly. If we don't get the right information, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines.

If we get too much food, or food that gives our bodies the wrong instructions, we can become overweight, undernourished, and at risk for the development of diseases and conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease.

In short, what we eat is central to our health. Consider that in light of Webster's definition of medicine: " The science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease."
Food acts as medicine--to maintain, prevent, and treat disease.

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How Does Food Impact Health? | Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing

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The food we eat gives our bodies the "information" and materials they need to function properly. If we don't get the right information, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines.If we get too much food, or food that gives our bodies the wrong instructions, we can become overweight, undernourished, and at risk for the development of diseases and conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease.In short, what we eat is central to our health.

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A new study shows how the things you eat can influence your risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, or type 2 diabetes. The findings suggest ways to change your eating habits to improve your health.

Experts already know that a healthy eating plan includes vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat dairy products. A healthy diet also includes lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts. It limits saturated and trans fats, sodium, and added sugars.

NIH-funded scientists analyzed how these 10 dietary factors affect your risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. These are known as cardiometabolic diseases. The team relied on data from the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and national mortality data.

The scientists found that risk of death from the 3 diseases was higher for those who consumed too much sodium, processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and unprocessed red meat. Risk of death was also higher among those who didn't eat enough nuts and seeds, seafood omega-3 fats, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, or polyunsaturated fats. According to the analysis, nearly half (45%) of deaths in 2012 from the 3 diseases was associated with too much or too little of these 10 dietary factors.

"This study establishes the number of cardiometabolic deaths that can be linked to Americans' eating habits, and the number is large," explains Dr. David Goff, a heart disease and public health expert at NIH. "Second, it shows how recent reductions in those deaths relate to improvements in diet, and this relationship is strong. There is much work to be done in preventing heart disease, but we also know that better dietary habits can improve our health quickly, and we can act on that knowledge by making and building on small changes that add up over time."

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tufts friedman school of nutrition and science policy

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journal of the american medical association

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How Your Eating Habits Affect Your Health

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Eating too much or too little of certain foods and nutrients raises the risk of dying of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

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What studies have been done for nutrition and health? 

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What studies have been done for nutrition and health? 

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The NutriNet-Santé study is an ongoing investigation into the relationship between nutrition and health. In this Special Feature, we look at some of the project's findings and speak with Principal Investigator Dr. Mathilde Touvier, who has been involved in the study since its inception.

A range of factors influences health, including genetics, lifestyle, environmental factors, and diet. Unraveling the complex relationships between these factors is a challenge.

For many reasons, it is incredibly difficult to investigate the role of nutrition in health and disease. For instance, no two people eat the exact same diet, and very few people eat the exact same food 2 days in a row.

As it is neither feasible nor ethical to ask thousands of people to follow a strict diet for 10 years to see what happens, researchers have to find other ways of unpicking the links between diet and disease.
The best way to tackle any difficult health-related question is to generate as much good quality data as possible, and this is the NutriNet-Santé study's raison d'etre.
Beginning in 2009, the NutriNet-Santé study was the first internet-based study of its kind. By the start of 2021, the team was regularly collecting data from 171,000 people aged 15 years and older, making it the largest ongoing nutrition study in the world.

Now running in France and Belgium, the team is also seeding similar projects in Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

Specifically, the researchers with the following aims:

1. Investigate the relationship between nutrition, health, lifestyle factors, and mortality.

2. Examine the factors that influence dietary patterns, such as economic and cultural factors.

The researchers keep a biobank of serum, plasma, and urine from about 20,000 people. They also collect stool to monitor and analyze gut bacteria.

Alongside questions about food intake, the NutriNet-Santé team collects information about food packaging, cooking practices, mode of production, physical activity, tobacco, drugs, environmental factors, and domestic and professional exposures.

Importantly, data from the NutriNet-Santé study are linked with medical and insurance records to improve accuracy regarding medications, diagnoses, and long-term sick leave. The study is financed entirely by public institutions.
Article highlights:
In recent years, ultra-processed foods have become a nutritional pariah, and the NutriNet-Santé study has played no small part in this.

Over recent years, data from the NutriNet-Santé study have revealed associations between diets high in ultra-processed foods and an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, mortality, depressive symptoms, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and gastrointestinal disorders.

As an example, one paper based on data from the NutriNet-Santé cohort, which appeared in the in 2018, concluded:
"In this large prospective study, a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet was associated with a significant increase of greater than 10% in risks of overall and breast cancer."
Another study using their data, which also appeared in , concludes:

"[H]igher consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with higher risks of cardiovascular, coronary heart, and cerebrovascular diseases."

Yet more research, which appeared in BMC Medicine in 2019, investigated ultra-processed foods and their links with depression. The authors write:

"Overall, [ultra-processed food] consumption was positively associated with the risk of incident depressive symptoms, suggesting that accounting for this non-nutritional aspect of the diet could be important for mental health promotion."

Next, the NutriNet-Santé researchers plan to investigate the causative aspects of this relationship. They will drill down into the specific compounds that might be responsible.
According to Dr. Touvier, thanks to the researchers' wealth of nutrition data, they can now "estimate the additive exposure for more than 330 additives authorized in Europe and also detect the mixtures of additives that are consumed by the population."
They have already identified these cocktails of additives and are now searching for relationships between particular mixtures of compounds and specific disease states.

Understanding which foods are associated with which health conditions is important, but the next step - changing behavior - can be even more challenging.

To address this, the NutriNet-Santé study focused on food labeling. Although product labels already provide information about levels of fat, sugar, and other ingredients, as Dr. Touvier pointed out, quickly gauging whether a product is healthful as you rush around a grocery store is not easy.

With this in mind, the NutriNet-Santé group designed Nutri-Score. This simple label gives each product a score from A to E, with A being the most healthful and E the least healthful.
The scoring system takes into account the amount of sugar, saturated fats, sodium, protein, fiber, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes to provide a score.
"The score has been validated against many health outcomes, using the NutriNet-Santé cohort [and other cohorts]. So we showed that people who ate foods with a better score had less risk of cancers, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and so on. We also validated it in other independent cohorts," explained Dr. Touvier.

"We also used the NutriNet-Santé cohort to validate how the score is understood and used by participants to rate nutritional quality."

And, even more importantly, the research has shown that in a grocery setting, people with access to this type of labeling choose more healthful foods. As the authors of one paper explain:

"The Nutri-Score was associated with a higher nutritional quality of purchases in experimental and large scale trials."

In France, some companies are already applying this label on a voluntary basis. To date, 520 firms, including a total of 690 brands, have registered to use the scoring system.

Dr. Touvier and the team are currently trying to convince the European Union to roll out the scoring system throughout the E.U. in 2022. However, they are facing stiff resistance from certain large food corporations and their lobbying groups.
More than 40 published studies back the benefits of the Nutri-Score. Dr. Touvier hopes that "it will be adopted because, for the consumer, we really showed it will have a great impact."
Over the years, there has been a fair amount of controversy around the benefits of eating organic produce. As Dr. Touvier explained, until recently, there were simply not enough data to make connections between these products and health outcomes.
Once again, the NutriNet-Santé study has begun to fill these gaps. According to Dr. Touvier, the team found "an association between higher concentrations of organic food and a lower risk of breast cancer and lymphoma." Similarly, the data "showed a lower risk of obesity, overweight, and metabolic syndrome."
The researchers have also demonstrated that people who eat more organic foods have "lower levels of pesticides in their urine." Next, they plan to quantify exposures to the various types of pesticides and identify "cocktails" of pesticide exposures. They are in the process of assessing whether certain pesticidal cocktails might be associated with specific health outcomes.

According to Dr. Touvier, one such study, which has just been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found that:

"People exposed to these cocktails of pesticides had a higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer."

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, so does NutriNet-Santé's data collection. The scientists are tracking how diets have shifted during these unusual times.

One study, for instance, showed that the pandemic has affected people differently, with some eating less healthfully and others improving their diet significantly.

"We saw a very diverse profile of participants. Some of them started to eat more sugary foods and to eat between meals because they were bored or stressed. Also, they lowered the level of physical activity. [...] For these participants, we saw an increase in body weight," explained Dr. Touvier. But the pandemic has had different effects on other people, she noted:
"Other participants began to cook more at home, so less processed foods and more homemade meals, and they increased their level of physical activity [...] These participants lost weight."
The NutriNet-Santé scientists also found that there were people who had made no change to their diet or level of activity.

As the researchers have also collected dried blood spots from more than 20,000 participants, they are able to detect anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
They are currently working on a way to link infection to diet. This research could reveal whether any dietary patterns are associated with an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection or, conversely, whether any nutritional profiles are associated with a protective effect.
Investigating nutrition is challenging. Every individual eats hundreds or thousands of ingredients each week, and no two diets are the same. Also, when scientists rely on self-reported dietary information, they are likely to get imprecise answers.

The NutriNet-Santé study was the first to use online questionnaires to collect data. As trailblazers for this methodology, the researchers spent a great deal of energy making sure that the data they were collecting were accurate and meaningful.

Medical News Today asked Dr. Touvier how the NutriNet-Santé study team went about this. She explained that early on in the study, the investigators ran a series of validation studies in which they checked participants' self-reported food intake against their "blood and urinary biomarkers" and their phone interviews with trained dietitians.
They found a "high correlation" between the information coming from participants, blood markers, and interview data.
In some cases, the data they collected were more reliable than the phone interviews. Dr. Touvier explained that some participants were more likely to enter unhealthful food in the anonymous online form than they were to mention it when speaking with a dietitian. She said:

"It's not perfect. It's still an observational study, but we have validated all of these methods, so they are reliable."

Another common issue that nutrition scientists face is that one brand of frozen pizza is not the same as another, and one bag of chips can harbor entirely different ingredients than another.

To help minimize this issue, the researchers designed a barcode reader that allows participants to scan their food items directly into the system. In this way, the scientists have direct access to the precise nutritional content of the food item.

Another significant issue with nutrition research is the role of industry bias. Studies that receive funding from interested parties are more likely to report the benefits of their produce. The NutriNet-Santé study, however, is publicly funded, and the data are not open access.
As Dr. Touvier explained, "we have a moral agreement with the participants not to provide the data to the food industry." However, the team does "share their data with other public researchers."
Correlation versus causation is the thorn in any observational study's heel. Finding an association is one thing, but proving that one factor directly causes another is a different challenge altogether. To ensure that the researchers chop away as many confounding factors as possible, they track a great number of variables.

For instance, they keep anthropometric data, such as height and weight; socioeconomic data; information about participants' occupations so that they can track potential environmental exposures to chemicals, for instance; medical history; current and past medications; activity levels; and more.

The NutriNet-Santé scientists are beginning to dive even deeper into the complexities of nutrition and health. Beyond the nutritional makeup of foods, they are beginning to investigate how the packaging might interact with food items and influence health. Their innovative barcode system helps them collate this information.

These data will also help with investigating sustainability, which is another area on which the team is beginning to focus.

The wealth of data that the NutriNet-Santé team has collected and continues to collect will slowly allow scientists to answer increasingly complex questions.
As the number of participants in the study steadily grows, Dr. Touvier hopes that the NutriNet-Santé team can "continue indefinitely." Undoubtedly, the insights that this team generates will have a beneficial effect on the health of future generations.

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What we have learned from the world's largest nutrition study

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The NutriNet-Santé study is an ongoing investigation into the relationship between nutrition and health. In this Special Feature, we look at some of the project's findings and speak with Principal Investigator Dr. Mathilde Touvier, who has been involved in the study since its inception.