Anna Bach-Faig

• phD & Msc Public Health Nutrition, Phyarmacyst
• Professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Background/Objectives: The transition to university life brings significant social, psychological, and environmental changes, making it a critical period for establishing long-term dietary habits. However, many Mexican university students fail to meet national dietary guidelines, increasing their risk of non-communicable diseases. This study examin...

South Africa faces a dual burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and communicable diseases, exacerbated by the high consumption of processed foods. The Eat Better South Africa (EBSA) program implements community-based low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) interventions to address these issues. This study evaluated the impact of EBSA's 6-week progra...

Main results of the first survey on healthy behaviors in 10 universities in Catalonia fromt he Catalan Health Pormoting Universities Network.

The Mediterranean diet (MD) has been shown to be a healthy dietary pattern (DP), and lately it is increasingly being studied as a sustainable DP. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the MD is a sustainable and healthy DP accounting for its carbon footprint, water footprint (WF), land use (LU), and/or energy use, based on the existing scient...

Background and objective Weight stigma has negative consequences for both physiological and psychological health. Studies on weight stigma in adolescence, particularly from general populations, are scarce in the Mediterranean area. The main aim of this study is to describe the prevalence of experienced and internalized weight stigma among a represe...

Background: The aim of this study was to analyze the nutritional quality of mid-afternoon snacks for schooled children aged 3 to 12 years in three areas of Catalonia (Spain). Methods: A descriptive observational study collected information on habits and the mid-afternoon snack of 782 schooled children aged 3 to 12 years in three cities, Barcelona,...

Background Sedentary lifestyles and ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption contribute to a high prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents. Screen time may be associated with higher UPF consumption and impact significantly on eating behaviors. Objectives The aim was to explore adolescents’ perceptions, attitudes and motivations concerni...

Since 2020, the progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2– Zero Hunger has faced a sudden stall due to an ongoing “polycrisis”. While some countries are on track, a great effort is still globally necessary to achieve the SDG2 targets. Here we provide a brief background about SDG2, including its synergies and trade-off...

The importance of self-care to improve health and social well-being is well recognised. Nevertheless, there remains a need to encourage people to better understand how their body works, and how to keep it healthy. Because of its important role, part of this understanding should be based on why the immune system must be supported. This highly comple...

The European Union (EU) plans to decarbonize the region by 2050. As highlighted by the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy, food systems are essential for this transition. Here we investigate the resource dependence and carbon emissions of the EU-27’s food systems from 2004 to 2014 via an ecological footprint (EF)-extended multi-regional input–out...

The importance of a sustainable diet is an emerging concept within sustainable food systems. Food systems emit 30% of greenhouse gases, which needs to change. A cross-sectional study was carried out to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and habits of students and professionals in the health sciences regarding a sustainable diet, comparing these to...

Eat Better South Africa (EBSA) is an organization that provides low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) nutrition and health education programs for women from under-resourced South African communities. Community assessments are essential to explore participants' potential facilitators and challenges of adhering to new dietary behaviours and should be imp...

In recent years in Western Europe, studies on entomophagy have drawn the attention of many researchers interested in identifying parameters that could improve the acceptability of insect consumption in order to introduce insects as a sustainable source of protein into the future diet. Analysing the factors involved in consumer acceptability in the...

PurposeBeetroot juice is a dietary supplement that contains high levels of inorganic nitrate (NO3-) and that its intake has proven effective at increasing blood nitric oxide (NO) concentrations improving endurance performance. However, the effect of this supplement in team sport performance, especially in female athletes, has been barely studied. T...

Background Older adults are at a greater risk of developing sarcopenia as a result of reduced mobility, malnutrition, dietary changes and certain diseases. There are no systematic reviews in the literature analysing the effects of supplementation with leucine alone or as part of a supplement, and with or without physical exercise in older people wi...

This systematic review aimed to examine the health outcomes and environmental impact of edible insect consumption. Following PRISMA-P guidelines, PubMed, Medline ProQuest, and Cochrane Library databases were searched until February 2021. Twenty-five articles met inclusion criteria: twelve animal and six human studies (randomized, non-randomized, an...

INTRODUCCIÓN: En los últimos años el consumo de ayudas ergogénicas se ha popularizado pero el estudio de motivaciones y patrones de uso entre deportistas federados en España es escaso. OBJETIVO: Conocer el consumo de ayudas ergogénicas entre deportistas federados catalanes y analizar los factores que influyen en su alimentación y su suplementación....

Background Healthy and sustainable diets need to be adopted to reduce the negative impact of food consumption on human and planetary health. Food systems account for a third of greenhouse gas emissions. “Dietary Patterns for Health and Sustainability” is a World Health Organization (WHO) project that aims to build consensus among international food...

Purpose Weight Bias Internalization (WBI) is pervasive and potentially damaging for health. Little is known about WBI in youth. As negative effects of WBI have been observed when controlling for BMI, measures that allow WBI to be assessed across different weight categories are needed. The Modified Weight Bias Internalization Scale (WBIS-M) is one o...

Resumen Introducción Las personas adultas mayores tienen un mayor riesgo de desarrollar sarcopenia debido a la movilidad reducida, la desnutrición, los cambios en la dieta y determinadas enfermedades. Actualmente, no existen revisiones sistemáticas que analicen los efectos de la suplementación con leucina sola o como parte de un suplemento, ya sea...

The Mediterranean region is increasingly water scarce, with the food system being the largest driver of water use. We calculate the water resources related to food consumption in nine major Mediterranean countries, by means of the water footprint (WF), for the existing situation (period 2011-2013) as well as the Mediterranean and EAT-Lancet diets....

Breakfast has a critical role in energy balance and dietary regulation. Consequently, it is considered an important component of a healthy diet, especially in adolescence, when there are great opportunities to consolidate habits and establish future patterns of healthiness in adulthood. Socioeconomic position (SEP) causes inequalities that are refl...

Unhealthy dietary patterns leads to a weight gain which represents a risk factor in the development of diseases. Spain is one of the countries with a higher prevalence of childhood overweight. Food is one of the key factors associated to this situation. Diets based on traidtional mediterranean patterns have been appreciated by public health experts...

Chronobiology is the scientific discipline of study of biological rhythms, a term that has gained ground in the sports world. Recently numerous studies have indicated that the time of day in which sports are practiced influences the achievement of good physical performance. The aim of this review was to study the relationship between circadian rhyt...

Obesity is a disease that straddles medico-nutritional, psychological, and socio-cultural boundaries. There is a clear relationship between lifestyle and obesity, and today the Mediterranean diet in the Mediterranean area may represent an interesting corrective asset. However, we should not be under any misapprehension about the model’s capacity fo...

Two aspects that characterize the Mediterranean diet (MD) are "what" and "how" we eat. Conviviality relates to "how" we eat and to the pleasure of sharing meals with significant people. The most studied concept is "family meals", which includes conviviality, which involves "enjoying" family meals. Given the lack of research on convivial family meal...

La obesidad es un problema de salud pública. La comprensión de factores tanto emocionales como dietéticos relacionados a su desarrollo es fundamentales para abordar este problema. El objetivo del presente estudio fue analizar por sexo y edad la relación de la grasa corporal con la alimentación emocional (AE) y la calidad de la dieta (CD) en poblaci...

Las infecciones de las vías respiratorios altas (IVRA), son debilitantes para el potencial deportivo de los atletas de élite. El ejercicio físico activa múltiples vías moleculares y bioquímicas relacionadas con el sistema inmune, sensibles a influencias nutricionales. Sobre este contexto, la inmunonutrición está adquiriendo una nueva dirección orie...

Background: Nowadays the food production, supply and consumption chain represent a major cause of ecological pressure on the natural environment, and diet links worldwide human health with environmental sustainability. Food policy, dietary guidelines and food security strategies need to evolve from the limited historical approach, mainly focused o...

Unhealthy diet and physical inactivity-major risk factors for the main non-communicable diseases-can be addressed by mobile health applications. Using an evidence-based systematic review design, we analysed studies on mobile applications to foster physical activity to determine whether they met the objective of increasing adults' physical activity....

The purpose of this article is to review the historical development of the healthy food model of the Mediterranean Diet and related scientific knowledge from the early 1960s to the present time. The review presents the origins of the first pyramid of the traditional Mediterranean Diet in 1993 and how it has been revised to produce, in 2010, a new u...

The primary objective of this study was to explore physicians’ adherence to the dietary pattern known as the Mediterranean diet (MD). As a secondary objective we assessed physicians’ awareness on the benefits of the MD and of the possibility of prescribing it. Physicians’ adherence to the MD was evaluated through the Spanish associations SEMERGEN a...

Background: From the 1960s to the early 21st-century adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) declined around the world. This was partly due to the westernization of eating habits. However, in the last decade a new variable came into play, the economic crisis, which may have affected dietary patterns. Objective: We analyzed worldwide trends of a...

The Mediterranean Diet (MedDiet) has been promoted as a means of preventing and treating cardiodiabesity. The aim of this study was to answer a number of key clinical questions (CQs) about the role of the MedDiet in cardiodiabesity in order to provide a framework for the development of clinical practice guidelines. A systematic review was conducted...

BACKGROUND Disglycaemia causes worldwide up to 3.7 million casualties a year. Pharmacist-led intervention in prediabetic patients prevents cardiovascular events and slows down diabetes progression. Moreover pharmacist-led prediabetes screening outcrops undiagnosed diabetic patients. METHODS Cross-sectional descriptive study for non-diabetic people...

INTRODUCCIÓN: las disglicemias provocan 3,7 millones de muertes anuales a nivel mundial. La intervención en pacientes prediabéticos permite la prevención de accidentes cardiovasculares y reduce la posibilidad de progresión de la historia natural de la diabetes. La intervención del farmacéutico comunitario es esencial para que afloren usuarios disgl...

Cardiodiabesity has been used to define and describe the well-known relationship between type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), obesity, the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The objective of this study was to perform a scientific literature review with a systematic search to examine all the cardiovascular risk factors combined...

Dietary patterns can substantially vary the resource consumption and environmental impact of a given population. Dietary changes such as the increased consumption of vegetables and reduced consumption of animal products reduce the environmental footprint and thus the use of natural resources. The adherence of a given population to the Mediterranean...

The recent recognition by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) of the Mediterranean diet as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity reinforces, together with the scientific evidence, the Mediterranean diet as a cultural and health model. The Mediterranean diet has numerous beneficial effects on among others...

The purpose of this article is to review the historical development of the healthy food model of the Mediterranean Diet and related scientific knowledge from the early 1960s to the present time. The review presents the origins of the first pyramid of the traditional Mediterranean Diet in 1993 and how it has been revised to produce, in 2010, a new u...

Changes in diet, reducing animal products and increasing consumption of vegetables can not only benefit human health and the overall use of land, but can also play a decisive role in the politics of climate change mitigation. In this sense, the Mediterranean diet (MD) is presented as a sustainable cultural model, respectful of the environment, whos...

To present the Mediterranean diet (MD) pyramid: a lifestyle for today. A new graphic representation has been conceived as a simplified main frame to be adapted to the different nutritional and socio-economic contexts of the Mediterranean region. This review gathers updated recommendations considering the lifestyle, dietary, sociocultural, environme...

To compare and evaluate the reliability of several indexes of adherence to the Mediterranean diet. The ten indexes included in the analysis were: Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS), Mediterranean Score (MS), Dietary Score (DS), Mediterranean-Dietary Quality Index (Med-DQI), Mediterranean Dietary Pattern adherence index (MDP), Mediterranean Adequacy Ind...

Selected Conference Proceedings of the VIIIth Barcelona International Congress on the Mediterranean Diet, Barcelona, Spain, 24–25th March 2010)

The aim of this article was to summarize the evidence concerning the association between Mediterranean dietary pattern and cancer risk in observational epidemiological studies. All the studies that met the following criteria were reviewed: human cohort and case-control studies that examined the effect of the Mediterranean diet as an entire food pat...

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the evolution of the Spanish population's global and regional adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) since 1987. A cross-sectional study was conducted analysing food consumption from the Spanish Household Consumption Surveys administered by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Th...

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the changes in the availability of the most important food components of the traditional Mediterranean diet and other food groups in five geographical areas during a 43-year period. Ecological study with food availability data obtained from FAO food balance sheets in forty-one countries for the perio...

The present study aimed to analyse the worldwide trends of adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD), in 1961-1965 and 2000-2003. Data were obtained from the FAO food balance sheets in two periods: 1961-1965 and 2000-2003. In order to have a sample from across the world, forty-one countries were selected. The average of available energy for differen...

WHO projections estimate that worldwide approximately a third of adults are overweight and a tenth are obese. The increasing obesity trends are a cause of great concern due to the obesity related co-morbidities that will rise in parallel. There is accumulating research into the Mediterranean diet and whether it could prevent or treat obesity. There...

We examined associations between two Mediterranean diet (MD) adherence indexes (the MD index, MDI, and the MD score, MDS) and several blood biomarkers of diet and disease. We studied 328 individuals from Catalonia (Northeastern Spain), ages 18-75, who provided fasting blood samples, a subset of the 2346 individuals as part of a larger representativ...