Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jan 13, 2020
Date Accepted: May 7, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Measuring the healthiness of child-targeted cereals: a study of the FoodSwitch platform in Sweden
ABSTRACT
Background:
Childhood obesity is a major public health issue. The increase in consumption of foods with poor nutritional value, such as processed foods, contributes to this. Breakfast cereals are often advertised to be a healthy way to start the day, but the healthiness of these products varies greatly.
Objective:
Our main objective was to gather information about the nutritional characteristics of breakfast cereals in Sweden and to investigate the healthiness of products targeted at children compared to other cereals. A secondary objective was to evaluate the alignment between the Keyhole symbol and the Health Star Rating.
Methods:
Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals from the largest Swedish grocery retailers were collected using the FoodSwitch platform. Products were defined as targeting children if they presented features addressed to children on the package.
Results:
In all, information on 261 ready-to-eat cereals were examined. Child-targeted cereals (8%) were higher in sugar (22.3g/100g vs 12.8g/100g, P < .001) and lower in fiber (6.2g/100g vs 9.8g/100g, P < .001) and protein (8.1g/100g vs 10.5g/100g, P < .001). Total fat (3g/100g vs 10.5g/100g, P < .001) and saturated fat (0.8g/100g vs 2.6g /100g, P < .001) were also lower and no difference was found in salt content (P = .61). Fewer child-targeted breakfast cereals displayed an on-pack Keyhole label (5% vs 22%; P = .06) and the mean Health Star Rating values were 3.5 vs 3.8 (P = .07) for child-targeted cereals compared to others. A correlation was found between the Keyhole symbol and the Health Star Rating.
Conclusions:
Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals targeted at children were less healthy overall compared to products not targeted at children. There is a clear need to improve the nutritional quality of child-targeted cereals.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.