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. 2024 Apr 17:11:1364695.
doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1364695. eCollection 2024.

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

Tera L Fazzino  1   2 , Carmine Summo  3 , Antonella Pasqualone  3
Affiliations

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

Tera L Fazzino et al. Front Nutr. .

Abstract

Background: Multi-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.

Methods: A national food system dataset was used to characterize HPF availability in Italy. A representative sample of foods commonly consumed in both Italy and the US were collected and compared. Foods represented six categories: cookies/biscotti, cakes/merendine, salty snacks, industrial bread, frozen pizza and protein/cereal bars. A standardized definition from Fazzino et al. identified HPF.

Results: Less 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).

Conclusion: The Italian food system may confer protection from HPF exposure. HPF products in Italy had lower palatability-related nutrients and higher satiety-promoting nutrients.

Keywords: carbohydrate; fat; fiber; food environment; sodium; sugar.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

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Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding from the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” Visiting Scholar Program funded TF’s time during the study.

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