Dietary Patterns in European and Brazilian Adolescents: Comparisons and Associations with Socioeconomic Factors

Associations between dietary patterns (DP) and socioeconomic factors have been little explored in adolescents. The aim of this study was to identify DP in European and Brazilian adolescents and to investigate their associations with a range of socioeconomic indicators. Adolescents from the HELENA-study and the Household Budget Survey were analyzed. Factor analysis was used to obtain DP. Linear regression was used to examine the association between DP and SES. In Europeans, the Western DP was associated with low education of the mother, high socioeconomic status (boys), older age (boys), and living in cities of the Northern Europe; in Brazilians, the Western DP was associated with high secondary education of the mother, high socioeconomic status and living in Southern areas of the country. The Traditional European DP, in both genders, was associated with high secondary education of the mother and inversely associated with a high socioeconomic status; the Traditional Brazilian DP, was associated with university level education of the mother and older age (boys). The association between DP and socioeconomic factors is relevant for the understanding of food-related practices and highlight the importance of performing a complete assessment of the socioeconomic influence in adolescent’s DP from developed and developing countries.
Sources of Funding: the HELENA study received funding from the European Union’s Sixth RTD Framework Programme (Contracts FOOD-CT-2007-036196-2 and FOODCT-2005-007034, respectively). Additional support was received from the Spanish Ministry of Education (AGL2007-29784-E/ALI), Axis-Shield Diagnostics Ltd. (Oslo, Norway), Abbot Científica S.A. (Spain). The HBS was funded by the Ministry of Health of Brazil (agreement number 4652/2005; grant number 25000.202044/2005-16). C.A.B. received a fellowship from the Brazilian Federal Agency (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior-CAPES) and A.M.S.P received financial support by Fundación Cuenca Villoro (Spain) both for the improvement of higher education. D.J.P was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation—MINECO (RYC-2014-16938).