Dietary fibre intake and its association with ultraprocessed food consumption in the general population of Switzerland: analysis of a population-based, cross-sectional national nutrition survey

Abstract

Objectives

The objective of this study was to describe the compliance to dietary fibre recommendations of the Swiss population and to investigate the association between dietary fibre intake and ultraprocessed food (UPF) consumption.

Methods

Data were obtained from the cross-sectional Swiss National Nutrition Survey menuCH. We summarised the sociodemographic, lifestyle and anthropometric parameters as well as dietary data collected with two 24-hour dietary recalls for the whole population and subgroups according to absolute and relative dietary fibre intake. We analysed the associations between dietary fibre intake and UPF consumption by fitting multinomial logistic regression models. Data were weighted according to the menuCH weighting strategy to achieve a representation of the Swiss population.

Results

Data obtained from 2057 adults were included in the analysis, of which 87% had a dietary fibre intake of <30 g/day. Participants with high UPF consumption had lower odds of being in the medium or high dietary fibre intake groups than participants with low UPF consumption. The odds of being in the medium or high dietary fibre intake groups decreased linearly across quartiles of UPF consumption ( p for trend ≤0.004).

Conclusions

Dietary fibre intake is insufficient in all population groups in Switzerland. UPF consumption is inversely and dose dependently associated with dietary fibre intake. To increase dietary fibre intake, public health measures should discourage UPF consumption and increase dietary fibre intake via unprocessed or minimally processed foods.