CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Dietary nutritional profile and phenolic compounds consumption in schoolchildren of highlands of Argentinian Northwest.Rossi, M.C; De Piero A.J; Bassett M.N.; Samman N.C.Instituto Superior de Investigaciones Biológicas ? Dpto. Bioquímica de la Nutrición. Facultad de Bioquímica, Química y Farmacia, UNT-CONICET. Tucumán, Argentina. Autor de correspondencia: Email: nsamman@arnet.com.ar , Tel/Fax: +54-381-4248921The objective of this work was to assess daily consumption of phenolic compounds from fruits and vegetables by schoolchildren of high altitude regions from northwest of Argentina. A nutritional survey including food-frequency consumption, 24-hour dietary recall and anthropometric measurements was applied to 241 children from 6 to 12 years old. The amounts of the different classes of phenolic compounds were established from Food Composition Tables in phenol-explorer website. Statistics analyses were performed using IBM SPSS 20.0. Nutritional status assessment showed underweight (2.6%), low weight (12.2%), overweight (12.2%) and obesity (7.8%). Dietary patterns indicated high intake of simple carbohydrates, saturated fat and sugary products. The average ranges of consumption of vegetables and fruits were 0.18 to 42.46 and 0.75 to 28.66 g, respectively. Most consumed vegetables in decreasing order were potato, carrot, onion, squash, red pepper, chard, lettuce, peas, eggplant, avocado and green pepper. Regarding fruits consumption order were tomato, apple, banana, orange, tangerine, pear and grapes. Of the total study population, 94% did not consume the recommended amount of vegetables and fruits (> 4 servings/day). Considering that fruits and vegetables are the main sources of phenolic compounds, the mean consumption of total polyphenols was 43.32 mg/day. The distribution of the different phenolic compounds provided by the diet was 54.7% of phenolic acids; 42.8% of flavonoids; other polyphenols 0.04%; 2.35% of lignans and 0.04% of stilbens. Despite schoolchildren eat fruits and vegetables daily, they are always the same, being the consumption monotonous. These results showed a lower intake compared to other works, although these previous studies assessed adult population. Considering that polyphenols have protective health effects, low consumption combined with an inadequate dietary pattern and the presence of overweight and obesity could be risk of development of chronic noncommunicable diseasesSome limitations of this study were that there are no recommended intakes and local composition tables of phenolic compounds. This could cause errors in the estimation of polyphenols, since their content in foods depends on weather and production conditions among others. However this nutritional study is important as a first step towards generating data of polyphenol intake in this age group.Key words: Phenolic compounds, schoolchildren, fruits and vegetables.