The Italian food environment may confer protection from hyper-palatable foods: evidence and comparison with the United States

The Italian food environment may confer protection from hyper-palatable foods: evidence and comparison with the United States

Blog Article

BackgroundMulti-national food corporations may saturate country-level food systems with hyper-palatable foods.However, the degree to which global food corporations have been integrated into country-level food systems may vary.Italy has largely retained local food production and may have low hyper-palatable food (HPF) availability in the food supply.The study quantified the prevalence of HPF in the Italian food system and compared the hyper-palatability of similar foods across Italy and the United States, which has wide HPF saturation.MethodsA national food system dataset was used to characterize HPF availability in Italy.

A representative sample of foods commonly consumed in both Italy and the Silymarin Complex US were collected and compared.Foods represented six categories: cookies/biscotti, Home Theatre Package cakes/merendine, salty snacks, industrial bread, frozen pizza and protein/cereal bars.A standardized definition from Fazzino et al.identified HPF.ResultsLess than one third (28.

8%) of foods in the Italian food system were hyper-palatable.US HPF items had significantly higher fat, sugar, and/or sodium across most food categories (p values = 0.001 to 0.0001).Italian HPF items had higher fiber and/or protein relative to US HPF from the same category (p values = 0.

01 to 0.0001).ConclusionThe Italian food system may confer protection from HPF exposure.HPF products in Italy had lower palatability-related nutrients and higher satiety-promoting nutrients.