Abstract
Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. A good quality breakfast must include dairy products, cereals, and fruits. The aim of this study is to determine breakfast dietary patterns and their nutritional quality among Chilean university students. A cross-sectional non-probabilistic study was conducted in 200 university students between 18 and 27 years in Santiago, Chile. To identify dietary patterns and breakfast quality, a breakfast food survey was conducted. Patterns were identified by factor analysis. Most of the subjects (53%) ate breakfast daily, with a higher prevalence among females (60.2% vs. 43.7%, p < 0.05); 68% did not consume fruits and 17.5% had good breakfast quality, with no differences by sex. Four breakfast dietary patterns were identified: “dairy & cereals”, “healthy”, “traditional salty” and “traditional sweet” that together explained 35.6% of the total variance. There was no sex difference in predominant dietary patterns. The “dairy & cereals” and “traditional sweet” patterns were associated with regularly eating breakfast (β: −0.47, p = 0.001; β: −0.32, p = 0.020) and the “healthy” pattern with BMI ≥25 kg/m2 (β: 0.35, p = 0.024). In conclusion, breakfast quality was inadequate due to low fruit consumption and energy intake. The four identified patterns included cereals, bread, dairy, fats and sugars. Results may be usual in the planning of future interventions aimed at improving breakfast consumption and quality in university students.
Highlights
The transition from secondary school to a university environment involves a significant life change for students that may be accompanied by behaviors that generate health risks, such as changes in sleep patterns, reduced physical activity, increased alcohol and cigarette consumption, and poor eating habits [1,2,3,4]
The breakfast food patterns we identified explained 37.5% of the variance, which, is below the recommended levels (60%) [47], is to be expected as the human diet presents a great variety of food or food groups
Similar to what has been reported by Pastor et al [53] in Spain, Whatnall et al [49] in Australia, and Blondin et al [54] in the US, patterns that include processed foods explained most of the total variance (22.2%, 16.8%, and 10.3% respectively); we found a "dairy & cereals" pattern that contained a high proportion of processed breakfast cereals
Summary
The transition from secondary school to a university environment involves a significant life change for students that may be accompanied by behaviors that generate health risks, such as changes in sleep patterns, reduced physical activity, increased alcohol and cigarette consumption, and poor eating habits [1,2,3,4]. This is a period of great nutritional vulnerability that is critical for the development of eating habits [5,6].
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