Neha Khandpur

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Verified

Neha verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• ScD in Public Health Nutrition and Obesity Epidemiology
• Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research

There is a rising prevalence of obesity in India, and diet may be a major determinant of this. We aimed to assess differences in types and quantities of food items consumed by obese and normal-weight people in India. Cross-sectional data of 7067 factory workers and their families were used from the Indian Migration Study, conducted in four cities a...

Ultra-processed foods are industrially formulated products that are convenient, highly-palatable, and contain few whole ingredients. While popular among US households regardless of SES, these foods constitute a relatively large proportion of grocery spending among low-income households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program...

Objective: To evaluate the effects of a supermarket meal bundling and electronic reminder intervention on food choices of families with children. Design: Quasi-experimental (meal bundling) and randomized, controlled trial (electronic reminders). Setting: Large supermarket in Maine during 40-week baseline and 16-week intervention periods in 2015–2...

The rapid increase in online shopping and the extension of online food purchase and delivery services to federal nutrition program participants highlight the need for a conceptual framework capturing the influence of online food retail environments on consumer behaviors. This study aims to develop such a conceptual framework. To achieve this, mixed...

Objective: There is limited description and documentation of the methods used for the categorization of dietary intake according to the NOVA classification, in large-scale cohort studies. This manuscript details the strategy employed for categorizing the food intake, assessed using food frequency questionnaires (FFQs), of participants in the Nurses...

OBJECTIVE To describe two low-burden diet quality scores and evaluate their performance in reflecting the dietary share of the least and most processed foods defined within the Nova food system classification. METHODS This cross-sectional study included data from the NutriNet-Brasil cohort. Participants answered the Nova24hScreener, a 3-minute sel...

BACKGROUND This study examined the longitudinal association between ultraprocessed food (UPF) consumption and overall hypertension risk and explored the contribution of UPF to racial disparities in risk for hypertension. METHODS We analyzed data from 5957 participants from the REGARDS cohort study (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Disparities in...

Background Nutrient content and degree of processing are complementary but distinct concepts, and a growing body of evidence shows that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) can have detrimental health effects independently from nutrient content. 10 + countries currently mandate front-of-package labels (FOPL) to inform consumers when products are high in ad...

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic induced psychological distress, which is linked to emotional eating and symptoms of addiction to ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Objective This study aimed to investigate whether symptoms of addiction to UPFs mediate the relationship between psychological stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic...

Background Prospective associations between total and groups of ultra-processed foods (UPF) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) remained to be characterised. Our aim was to assess the association of total and group-specific UPF intakes with CVD, coronary heart disease (CHD), and stroke in three large prospective cohorts of US adults. Additionally, we...

Background Increased consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) which have additives such as artificial colours, flavours and are usually high in salt, sugar, fats and specific preservatives, are associated with diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In India, there are no standard criteria for identifying UPFs using a classification syste...

Objective We assessed ultraprocessed food (UPF) intake and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) incidence within the prospective Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) cohorts. Methods A total of 204,175 women were observed (NHS 1984–2016; NHSII 1991–2017). Semiquantitative food frequency questionnaires were completed every two to four years. UPF intake was det...

BACKGROUND Individual beverages have shown divergent associations with type 2 diabetes. Whether overall beverage quality affects diabetes risk is unknown. Therefore, we estimated the association of a previously developed Beverage Quality Index (BQI) with incidence of diabetes in Mexican women. METHODS We included 77 484 female participants from the...

Objectives: We investigated the association of ultra-processed food (UPF) intake with mortality risk using alternative methods of assigning Nova classification. Methods: Our study population included 318,889 men and 221,607 women in the US NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study who were 50 to 71 years of age at baseline in 1995-1996. To increase study rig...

Background Limited evidence exists on the association between food insecurity (FI) and blood pressure control in the Caribbean despite the high burden of both. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between FI and hypertension prevalence, awareness, and control in the Eastern Caribbean. Methods and Findings We conducted a cross...

Objective To examine the association of ultra-processed food consumption with all cause mortality and cause specific mortality. Design Population based cohort study. Setting Female registered nurses from 11 US states in the Nurses’ Health Study (1984-2018) and male health professionals from all 50 US states in the Health Professionals Follow-up S...

Background Antioxidants and vitamins present in unprocessed foods may protect against development of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) whereas ultra-processed foods (UPFs) remove these nutrients, adding stabilizers and emulsifiers, and may thus increase SLE risk. We assessed the association of UPF intake and SLE incidence in two cohorts of women w...

Background Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are emerging as a risk factor for colorectal cancer (CRC), yet how post-diagnostic UPF intake may impact CRC prognosis remains unexplored. Methods Data collected from food frequency questionnaires were used to estimate intakes of total UPFs and UPF subgroups (serving/d) at least 6 months but less than 4 year...

Background Front-of-pack labeling (FOPL) has been identified as a cost-effective policy to promote healthy food environments and to help consumers make healthier food choices. Consumer surveys report that after implementation of mandatory ‘high in’ FOPL symbols between 30 and 70% of consumers choose or were willing to choose products with fewer ‘hi...

Background Increased consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) which are usually high in salt, sugar, fats, preservatives and additives are associated with diet-related non-communicable diseases. In India, there are no standard criteria for identifying UPFs that are similar to Nova food classification (based on extent and purpose of industrial pr...

Background & Aims: The landscape of nutrition research has changed over the past decades. We aimed to map the landscape of nutrition or diet-related interventions research, using data from randomised controlled trial (RCT) protocols published in the last decade. Methods: This meta-research study examined nutrition or diet-related RCT protocols publ...

The assignment of foods to one of four categories proposed by the Nova framework may be challenging in the absence of information on how these foods were prepared and their specific composition. A three-step iterative approach can make the categorization process more efficient and transparent, thereby increasing the accuracy of Nova estimates.

Background Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent the main cause of death in Mexico, while high blood pressure is suffered by about half of the adult population. Sodium intake is one of the main risk factors for these diseases. The Mexican adult population consumes about 3.1 g/day, an amount that exceeds what is recommended by the World Health Org...

Background and objectives: The consumption of unprocessed or minimally processed whole plant foods and of ultra-processed foods, as defined by the Nova food classification system, are associated in opposite ways with diet quality and risk of diseases. However, it can be difficult to evaluate and monitor the consumption of these foods in some contex...

Background: Front-of-pack labeling (FOPL) has been identified as a cost-effective policy to promote healthy diets. Health Canada has recently published FOPL regulations that will require food and beverages that meet or exceed set thresholds for sodium, sugars, or saturated fat to display a 'high in' symbol on the front of the package. Although a p...

Objective: Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) are implicated in the increasing risk of diabetes in the Caribbean. Few studies have examined associations between SSB consumption and diabetes in the Caribbean. Design: SSB was measured as teaspoon/day using questions from the National Cancer Institute Dietary Screener Questionnaire about intake of sod...

Background: High unprocessed and minimally processed food (UMP) intake has been associated with high-quality diets, while the opposite has been shown for ultra-processed food (UPF). Nevertheless, the association between UMP and UPF consumption and diet-quality over the long-term warrants further examination. Objective: This study aimed to assess...

Objective: We examined the relationship between ultra-processed food (UPF) intake and type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk among 3 large U.S. cohorts, conducted a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies, and assessed meta-evidence quality. Research design and methods: We included 71,871 women from the Nurses' Health Study, 87,918 women from the Nurses...

Introduction: Ultra-processed foods (UPF) are associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in European populations. Evidence is limited from U.S. populations, for specific UPF subgroups, and in the diet quality context. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that U.S. women with higher UPF intake have higher CVD risk and evaluated this association by UPF subg...

Introduction: Recent evidence suggests that intake of ultra-processed foods (UPF) is related to unfavorable cardio-metabolic risk profiles among generally healthy populations. However, evidence on the relationship between UPF intake and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) is lacking. Hypothesis: We assessed the hy...

Introduction: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) plays an important role in shaping the diet of low-income individuals and families. Trends in ultra-processed food intake (UPF) among SNAP participants and non-participants has not been studied. Hypothesis: Compared to non-participants, SNAP participants would have a higher UPF inta...

Background: Food insecurity (FI), defined as lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle, affects 40% of people across the Caribbean and is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Despite evidence that suggests an association between FI and sleep health and FI prevalence in the Caribbean, few studies have been...

Introduction: There is limited evidence on the association between long-term consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) and the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D), among the U.S population. The overall strength of this association has also not been established. Hypothesis: Higher intake of UPF is associated with a higher risk of T2D in U.S. adults. The...

Introduction: Noncommunicable diseases (e.g. type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease) are the leading cause of death globally and among adults in Ethiopia. Suboptimal diet (with high intake of sugar, salt, and saturated fat) is a major risk factor for such diseases and the consumption of processed foods rich in these nutrients is risi...

Introduction The Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) reporting guideline establishes a minimum set of items to be reported in any randomised controlled trial (RCT) protocol. The Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) reporting guideline was developed to improve the reporting of interve...

Background: Growing evidence indicates the adverse effect of ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption. However, it remains unknown whether UPF consumption influences the risk of colorectal cancer precursors, namely conventional adenomas and serrated lesions. Methods: We drew data from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), NHS II, and Health Professional...

Importance: Although consumption of ultraprocessed food has been linked to higher risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and obesity, little is known about the association of consumption of ultraprocessed foods with cognitive decline. Objective: To investigate the association between ultraprocessed food consumption and cognitive dec...

Objectives This study aimed to examine and compare the extent to which different nutrient profile models (NPMs) from Latin America (LA) identify packaged foods and beverages with child-directed marketing sold in Brazil as being high in nutrients associated to the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Materials and methods In this cross-section...

Background: The degree of food processing may be an important dimension of diet in how it relates to health outcomes. A major challenge is standardizing food processing classification systems for commonly used datasets. Objectives: To standardize and increase transparency in its application, we describe the approach used to classify foods and be...

Consumption of ultra‐processed foods (UPF) has progressively increased worldwide in the last 30 years. High intake of UPF is associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer and hypothesized to induce systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. Although UPF may also be a risk factor for cognitive decline through these pathways, little is lnown abo...

Background Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent the main cause of death in Mexico, while high blood pressure is suffered by about half of the adult population. Sodium intake is one of the main risk factors for these diseases. The Mexican adult population consumes about 3.1 g/day, an amount that exceeds what is recommended by the World Health Org...

Introduction The consumption of trans-fatty acids (TFA) is directly associated with cardiovascular disease risk and is responsible for a significant health burden globally. The policy strategies for reducing TFA include limiting their content in foods and eliminating partially hydrogenated oils (PHO) in the market. This study aims to describe a com...

Background: Journal articles describing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews with meta-analysis of RCTs are not optimally reported and often miss crucial details. This poor reporting makes assessing these studies' risk of bias or reproducing their results difficult. However, the reporting quality of diet- and nutrition-relate...

BACKGROUND Journal articles describing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews with meta-analysis of RCTs are not optimally reported and often miss crucial details. This poor reporting makes assessing these studies’ risk of bias or reproducing their results difficult. However, the reporting quality of diet- and nutrition-related...

Objective To assess whether maternal ultra-processed food intake during peripregnancy and during the child rearing period is associated with offspring risk of overweight or obesity during childhood and adolescence. Design Population based prospective cohort study. Setting The Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII) and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS I...

Background and aims The negative effect on dietary nutrient profiles is the most obvious mechanism explaining the higher risk of cardiometabolic diseases associated with increased dietary share of UPF observed in large cohort studies. We estimate the proportion of diets with excessive energy density, excessive free sugars or saturated fat contents...

Background & aims Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) has been associated with childhood obesity, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated plasma nuclear magnetic resonance metabolic profiles of higher UPF consumption and their role in obesity risk in the British ALSPAC cohort. Methods We performed cross-sectional an...

Objective To examine the association between consumption of ultra-processed foods and risk of colorectal cancer among men and women from three large prospective cohorts. Design Prospective cohort study with dietary intake assessed every four years using food frequency questionnaires. Setting Three large US cohorts. Participants Men (n= 46 341) f...

Food industries are reformulating their products to lower total sugar and caloric content. Caloric sugars are often substituted by or combined with non-caloric sweeteners. Our study analyzed information about the presence, number and type, and content of different sweeteners displayed on the ingredient list of 10 key ultra-processed products (UPP),...

Objective This study aimed to assess the most consumed school snacks using the free listing and understand how marketing strategies on food labels influenced children's perceptions of snacks via focus groups. Design The study design involved free lists and semi-structured focus group interviews. Setting São Paulo, Brazil. Participants A total of...

Background Ultra-processed foods (UPF) are becoming extensively available in the food environments. UPF are industrial formulations that are designed to maximize palatability and consumption through a combination of calorie-dense ingredients and chemical additives. UPFs are also aggressively marketed, which may make them more attractive than unproc...

Providing information about the sugar content of packaged foods on product labels is an important strategy to lower consumers' sugar intake. This study assessed the effect of exposure to different sugar labels on consumers' understanding of the sugar content of foods and their food choices. In the first phase, five focus groups were conducted with...

Background and Purpose There is growing interest in expanding healthy eating interventions in the retail setting. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation of a successful 2-for-1 price incentive for fruits and vegetables (F&V), including frozen and canned, that took place in partnership with a large chain grocery retailer in Mai...

This study compares the effectiveness of different front-of-package label designs in a Brazilian sample (n = 1384). Eligible adults were randomized to one of two study arms and viewed images of snacks with either a triangular warning label (TL) or a rectangular ‘high in’ label with a magnifying glass (ML). They responded to a series of questions th...

Background Food marketing influences consumers’ preferences for and selection of marketed products. Although a substantial body of research has described food marketing practices in brick-and-mortar stores, no research has examined food marketing in online grocery retail despite its growing importance as a source of food-at-home purchases. Objecti...

Background Ultra-processed foods represent a considerable part of the diet of US children and adolescents, yet their association with total-, abdominal- and visceral overweight/obesity remains understudied. Objective To examine associations between dietary contribution of ultra-processed foods and total-, abdominal- and visceral overweight/obesity...

Introdução: O consumo excessivo de sódio no Brasil é majoritariamente decorrente do uso indiscriminado de sal e condimentos ultraprocessados durante o preparo de refeições, sendo que a influência masculina em tais atividades necessita, ainda, de maior exploração. Objetivos: Este trabalho visa investigar a participação paterna na alimentação familia...

Ultra-processed food intake has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer in Western populations. No data are available in the Latin American population although the consumption of ultra-processed foods is increasing rapidly in this region. We evaluated the association of ultra-processed food intake to breast cancer risk in a case–control s...

This study assessed associations between ultraprocessed food consumption and dietary nutrient profile linked to obesity in children and adolescents in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States using nationally representative data collected between 2004 and 2014. Linear regression models were us...

Objective To describe policies and practices of online grocery retailers that may affect healthy food access, including retailers participating in the US Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Online Purchasing Pilot. Design Cross-sectional, quantitative content analysis of 21 online grocery retail websites from Nove...

Background Worldwide consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is continued to rise. Growing evidence has linked higher consumption with elevated risks of obesity and non-communicable diseases in adults. However, the influence of UPFs on long-term adiposity trajectories have not been evaluated in children. Methods Prospective birth cohort data w...

This manuscript details the strategy employed for categorising food items based on their processing levels into the four NOVA groups. Semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) from the Nurses’ Health Studies (NHS) I and II, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) and the Growing Up Today Studies (GUTS) I and II cohorts were use...

This codebook was developed to assess the online food retail environment. Codebook items were selected in alignment with a conceptual framework from previous research describing the influence of the online food retail environment on consumer behavior, and included four domains: (1) retailer policies and practices; (2) food marketing; (3) website cu...

Background Worldwide consumption of ultra-processed foods is continued to rise. Growing evidence has linked ultra-processed food consumption with elevated risks of obesity, non-communicable diseases, and mortality in adults. Associations between ultra-processed food consumption and long-term adiposity trajectories have never been investigated in ch...

Background & Aims The rising incidence of inflammatory bowel disease in regions undergoing Westernization has coincided with the increase in ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption over the past few decades. We aimed to examine the association between consumption of UPFs and the risk of Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Methods We p...

The USDA Online Purchasing Pilot, which allows SNAP participants to shop and pay for groceries online, rapidly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 2020 to March 2021, the number of participating states increased from 5 to 47. This brief assesses whether the Pilot promotes healthy food access (using the criteria of availability and uti...

Importance Reports of associations between higher consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPF) and elevated risks of obesity, noncommunicable diseases, and mortality in adults are increasing. However, associations of UPF consumption with long-term adiposity trajectories have never been investigated in children. Objective To assess longitudinal associ...

Background Databases composed by nutrient composition tables, food groups, food processing categories, and servings and portion sizes adjusted for local population food habits or specific study aims are paramount to diet data assessment quality. Objective We assembled a database, comprising the food composition tables of Brazil, Argentina and the U...

Background: A growing body of evidence demonstrates that diets high in ultra-processed food products (UPF)—ready-to-eat formulations of processed substances that have been extracted or refined from whole foods and that typically contain added flavors, colors, and other cosmetic additives -- lack nutrient quality and contribute to energy imbalance....

Objective: To describe the Nova score for the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) and evaluate its potential in reflecting the dietary share of UPF in Brazil. Methods: This study was conducted in São Paulo with a convenience sample of 300 adults. Using a tablet, participants answered a 3-minute electronic self-report questionnaire on the...

Cross-sectional nutritional survey data collected in eight countries were used to estimate saturated fatty acid intakes. Our objective was to estimate the proportion of excessive saturated fatty acid intakes (>10 % of total energy intake) that could be avoided if ultra-processed food consumption was reduced to levels observed in the first quintile...

Background Implementation science has scant evidence of how dietary guidelines can be developed into actionable behavior-change messages and even less evidence on their motivating potential and perceived effect on behavior. This may explain the widening gap between nutrition science and individual behavior and the low uptake of dietary recommendati...

This study examined the association between measures of acculturation to the US environment including place of birth, and language spoken at home and proportion of life in the US among foreign-born, in relation to the dietary contribution of ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods, as defined by the NOVA food classification system, are formula...

Objective: To qualitatively examine contextual factors contributing to differences in infant sleep across race/ethnicity. Method: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 mothers of 7-12-month-old infants across four strata: high-income white, low-income white, high-income Hispanic and/or black, and low-income Hispanic and/or black. Mothers...