Consumo de biodiversidade alimentar entre adultos e idosos: estudo Brazuca Natal

Abstract

The evaluation of food biodiversity has been gaining prominence in nutrition due to the positive association between the diversity of consumed foods, diet quality, and individual health. However, the use of methods capable of capturing species diversity a posteriori in human diets remains limited, representing a gap for national and international studies that assess food consumption. This study aims to propose a methodology for identifying food biodiversity and analyzing the biodiversity consumption of adults and the elderly in the municipality of Natal/RN. This dissertation is a quantitative, cross-sectional, analytical study with complex sampling. Individual data were obtained from the "Brazilian Usual Consumption Assessment" (Brazuca-Natal) population-based study conducted in 2019-2020. A four-step approach was developed to identify food biodiversity a posteriori in the food consumption database of 398 participants, which consists of: 1st step) Data cleaning and verification; 2nd step) Identification of the type of processing of food items according to the Nova food classification system (G1 - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods, G2 - Culinary ingredients, G3 - Processed foods, and G4 - Ultra-processed foods); 3rd step) Taxonomic clues: assignment of scientific names to species based on vernacular names; 4th step) Inclusion of identified species in the database. We applied the DSR biodiversity indicator, adjusted per 1000 kcal, to food intake data and categorized biodiversity consumption into tertiles of unique species consumption. We analyzed the relationship between biodiversity consumption and sociodemographic and anthropometric variables using Pearson's chi-square test (p<0.05). A total of 178 varieties of food origins were identified, including 20 animal species and 158 plant or fungi species. The number of animal species under the Nova food groups were: G1=14, G2=3, G3=5, G4=5; and plant or fungi species were: G1=145, G2=10, G3=50, G4=40. The results highlight the prominence of beans, sugar, corn, rice, wheat, beef, chicken, and coffee in the diet of the Natal population. In multinomial logistic regression, we observed a positive association between biodiversity consumption and male gender and a negative association with the elderly life stage (p<0.001, both), in unadjusted and adjusted analyses. When extrapolating statistical parameters, we observed in the unadjusted analysis that residents of the North Zone are more likely to consume in tertile 1 (lower biodiversity consumption) than in tertile 3 (higher biodiversity consumption) (p 0.045), and individuals with excess weight by BMI are more likely to consume in tertile 2 (intermediate biodiversity consumption) than in tertile 3, in both unadjusted (p 0.036) and adjusted analyses (p 0.010). We conclude that the proposed methodology provides a foundation for more contextually appropriate actions in the field of nutrition. The analysis of dietary biodiversity among adults and older adults revealed that dietary biodiversity is linked to health determinants.