Cuando los precios suben, el consumo de alimentos ultraprocesados aumenta (y perdemos salud)

Artículo de divulgación publicado en The Conversation España el día 21/09/2022.Si abusamos de los ultraprocesados no es solo porque elegimos mal sino, en gran medida, porque sus precios son mucho más bajos que los de los alimentos frescos. El problema es que esta tendencia tiene implicaciones graves para la salud.N

The value of the "ultra-processed food" concept in public health

EditorialS

Disentangling nutrition facts from fiction : towards healthy and sustainable consumption in industrialized societies

Over the last centuries, in the context of industrialization, globalization, and urbanization, profound dietary changes have occurred. Ubiquitous access to cheap, readily available and highly palatable unhealthy products, together with aggressive marketing that significantly influences social norms, have led to overconsumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. This has not only been associated with a higher prevalence of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, but also with detrimental effects on the world?s natural resources. Broader and braver public health measures favoring the availability and affordability of healthy, minimally processed foods should be implemented in conjunction with educational strategies to re-encourage a healthy and sustainable food consumption

Smoking Status, Changes in Smoking Status and Health-Related Quality of Life: Findings from the SUN (“Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra”) Cohort

We aimed to evaluate the association between smoking, changes in smoking, and quality of life in a cohort of Spanish university graduates. Smoking habits were self-reported at baseline and four years later. Quality of life was assessed using the Short Form-36 (SF-36) at year 4. Statistical differences in SF-36 scores between groups were determined using ANCOVA with age and sex as covariates. Out of 5,234 eligible participants over 2000–2006, there were 2,639 non-smoker participants, 1,419 ex-smokers, and 1,048 smokers. Within the previous four years, 435 participants became recent quitters and 205 starters. Comparing smoking and health status in year 4, non-smokers showed better scores than the other categories of ever smoking in all dimensions except in the vitality scale value, which was similar in non-smokers and in those smoking less than 15 cigarettes/day. Comparing changes in smoking and health in year 4, continuing smokers had statistically significant worse scores than non-smokers in general health, social functioning, role-emotional and mental health, whereas recent quitters showed statistically significant improvements in role-emotional and mental health over those who had continued smoking or those who became smokers. Our findings support a dose-response relationship between cigarette consumption and a worse quality of life in general and mental health in particular. They also support that changes in smoking have an impact on health

Cardiac-surgery associated acute kidney injury requiring renal replacement therapy. A Spanish retrospective case-cohort study

Acute kidney injury is among the most serious complications after cardiac surgery and is associated with an impaired outcome. Multiple factors may concur in the development of this disease. Moreover, severe renal failure requiring renal replacement therapy (RRT) presents a high mortality rate. Consequently, we studied a Spanish cohort of patients to assess the risk factors for RRT in cardiac surgery-associated acute kidney injury (CSA-AKI). METHODS: A retrospective case-cohort study in 24 Spanish hospitals. All cases of RRT after cardiac surgery in 2007 were matched in a crude ratio of 1:4 consecutive patients based on age, sex, treated in the same year, at the same hospital and by the same group of surgeons. RESULTS: We analyzed the data from 864 patients enrolled in 2007. In multivariate analysis, severe acute kidney injury requiring postoperative RRT was significantly associated with the following variables: lower glomerular filtration rates, less basal haemoglobin, lower left ventricular ejection fraction, diabetes, prior diuretic treatment, urgent surgery, longer aortic cross clamp times, intraoperative administration of aprotinin, and increased number of packed red blood cells (PRBC) transfused. When we conducted a propensity analysis using best-matched of 137 available pairs of patients, prior diuretic treatment, longer aortic cross clamp times and number of PRBC transfused were significantly associated with CSA-AKI.Patients requiring RRT needed longer hospital stays, and suffered higher mortality rates. CONCLUSION: Cardiac-surgery associated acute kidney injury requiring RRT is associated with worse outcomes. For this reason, modifiable risk factors should be optimised and higher risk patients for acute kidney injury should be identified before undertaking cardiac surgery

Environmental Impact of Dietary Choices: Role of the Mediterranean and Other Dietary Patterns in an Italian Cohort

Background: Current scientific literature suggests healthy dietary patterns may have less environmental impact than current consumption patterns, but most of the studies rely on theoretical modeling. The aim of this study was to assess the impact on resources (land, water, and energy) use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of healthy dietary patterns in a sample of Italian adults. Methods: Participants (n = 1806) were recruited through random sampling in the city of Catania, southern Italy. Dietary consumption was assessed through a validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ); dietary patterns were calculated through dietary scores. The specific environmental footprints of food item production/processing were obtained from various available life-cycle assessments; a sustainability score was created based on the impact of the four environmental components calculated. Results: The contribution of major food groups to the environmental footprint showed that animal products (dairy, egg, meat, and fish) represented more than half of the impact on GHG emissions and energy requirements; meat products were the stronger contributors to GHG emissions and water use, while dairy products to energy use, and cereals to land use. All patterns investigated, with the exception of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH), were linearly associated with the sustainability score. Among the components, higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet and Alternate Diet Quality Index (AHEI) was associated with lower GHG emissions, dietary quality index-international (DQI-I) with land use, while Nordic diet with land and water use. Conclusions: In conclusion, the adoption of healthy dietary patterns involves less use of natural resources and GHG emissions, representing eco-friendlier options in Italian adults

Building parameters that influence overheating of apartment buildings in a temperate climate in Southern Europe

Overheating in dwellings is a global concern that is increasing due to global warming and more frequent and extreme heatwaves. This study assesses the relationship between different building parameters (built period, floor level, orientation, window area and solar shading) and compares indoor overheating hours during summer in twelve apartments monitored in Pamplona (North of Spain). They were selected as samples from different Spanish built periods related to different energy regulations, without mechanical cooling and with some kind of exterior solar shading. Overheating hours were calculated using the UNE-EN 16798 standard, which establishes a maximum acceptable operative temperature. This limit is adaptive and it is defined as the exponentially weighted running mean of the daily outdoor temperature. Multilevel mixed-effects linear and logistic regressions were used to analyse and compare overheating hours. Floor level, window area and solar shading were the parameters that showed a significant relationship with indoor overheating hours (p < 0.01). Orientation and built period did not reach a statistically significant value (p > 0.01). It is particularly noteworthy that the apartments built under the current Spanish Energy Regulations (after 2006) do not show a significant reduction in indoor overheating hours compared to those built without any energy regulations. This assessment reveals that current building energy regulations may not be enough to avoid overheating or ensure adaptation to warmer conditions. Therefore, this study contributes to establishing the main building parameters to improve in order to adapt Spanish apartment buildings to warming conditions in temperate climates

La importancia de la nutrición y los estilos de vida saludables en la infancia y adolescencia

Habiendo leído con atención la editorial de la Dra. Marti y el Dr. Martínez acerca de la necesidad imperiosa de actuar de forma inmediata en la alimentación del adolescente, queremos mostrar nuestro máximo acuerdo con los autores cuando urgen a frenar el avance de la obesidad mediante la adquisición de hábitos de vida saludable en edades tempranas de la vida

The role of dietary inflammatory index in cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and mortality

Abstract: Inflammation is an underlying pathophysiological process in chronic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. In fact, a number of systematic reviews have shown the association between inflammatory biomarkers, such as CRP, IL-1 , IL-6, TNF- , IL-4, or IL-10, and cardio-metabolic diseases. Diet is one of the main lifestyle-related factors which modulates the inflammatory process. Different individual foods and dietary patterns can have a beneficial health effect associated with their anti-inflammatory properties. The dietary inflammatory index (DII) was recently developed to estimate the inflammatory potential of overall diet. The aim of this review is to examine the findings of recent papers that have investigated the association between the DII, cardio-metabolic risk factors and cardiovascular disease. The relevance of the DII score in the association between inflammation and cardio-metabolic diseases is critically appraised, as well as its role in the context of healthy dietary patterns. We conclude that the DII score seems to be a useful tool to appraise the inflammatory capacity of the diet and to better understand the relationships between diet, inflammation, and cardio-metabolic diseases