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Background: The present study aimed to examine how different meal and snack patterns are associated with micronutrient intakes and diet quality among a nationally representative sample of Greek children and adolescents aged 1-19 years from the cross-sectional Hellenic National Nutrition and Health Survey (n = 598)., Methods: Meal and snack patterns were derived using 24-h dietary recalls. Mean adequacy ratio (MAR) was used as an overall measure of diet quality. Multiple linear regression adjusted for covariates was conducted to examine associations between eating patterns, nutrient intakes and MAR., Results: Four most frequently reported eating schemes were identified including breakfast (B), lunch (L), dinner (D) and two snacks (S) (20.9%); B, L, D and 1S (16.2%); B, L, D and 3S (10.8%); and B, L and D (7.9%). Based on these schemes, the daily consumption of all main meals from the majority of the sample was highlighted. In children and adolescents aged 4-19 years, increasing snack frequency was positively associated with intakes of vitamin D, vitamin K, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, folate, magnesium, copper and selenium. An inverse association was recorded for vitamin E, vitamin B 6 , calcium and iron. Among children aged 1-3 years, only niacin and copper were significantly associated with number of snacks, with the group of 'B-L-D-2S' presenting the highest intake. As for the overall diet quality, among all participants, there was no significant association of MAR with the type of meal and snack pattern, and thus the snack frequency., Conclusions: Snacking behaviour is a common practice among children and adolescents. Modifying current snack foods with nutrient-rich choices could lead to an improvement of their diet's nutritional quality., (© 2019 The British Dietetic Association Ltd.)

Abstract: The dialyzability method has been considered a convenient option for screening a large number of samples for iron bioavailability. A new setup that allows the rapid and efficient application of the dialyzability method has been recently proposed. To evaluate the new setup for its applicability in predicting iron and zinc bioavailability, dialyzable iron or zinc were compared with iron or zinc absorption. A series of solutions and meals that have been employed in published studies on iron or zinc absorption were prepared as described in the literature and digested in vitro using the new setup. Dialyzability was measured and correlated with published data on absorption. Iron or zinc dialyzability measured with the proposed setup correlated well with iron or zinc absorption. These results suggest that the new setup can be employed in the future applications for the prediction of iron or zinc bioavailability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]