Experimental design
The Study of Cardiovascular Risks in Adolescents (ERICA) is a multicenter, cross-sectional, nationwide, school-based study conducted between March 2013 and December 2014 with adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years of all genders, enrolled in public and private schools located in cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants [24]. ERICA aimed to estimate the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and metabolic syndrome in Brazilian adolescents.
The ERICA sample included thirty-two strata composed of twenty-seven capitals and five sets of municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in each of the five geographic macro-regions of the country. For each geographic stratum, schools were selected with probability proportional to the size and inversely proportional to the distance from the capital. In the sample, three classes from each school were selected. Using the grade year as an age proxy, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades of elementary school and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades of high school were eligible for selection. All students from the selected classes were invited to participate. The sample is representative of medium and large municipalities (> 100,000 inhabitants) at the national and regional levels and Brazilian capitals [24].
Participants
ERICA had 102,327 eligible adolescents. Adolescents with some degree of disability, temporary or permanent, that would make it impossible to participate in the study and pregnant adolescents were considered ineligible. Excluding adolescents absent on the collection day and those who refused to participate, 74,589 adolescents from 1,247 schools in 124 Brazilian municipalities were evaluated [25]. Three questionnaires were applied: one for teenagers, one for parents/educators, and one about the school. In addition, anthropometric assessment, blood pressure measurement, and blood sample collection were performed. In the present study, we only used the form for adolescents, including a 24-hour diary (24hR) and information on weight and height, to calculate the adolescents' Body Mass Index.
All adolescents studied answered the questionnaire using the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), 73,160 adolescents answered a 24-hour food reminder (24hR), and 73,787 participated in the anthropometric assessment. The questionnaire consisted of approximately 100 questions divided into 11 blocks covering: socioeconomic status, work, smoking, alcohol use consumption, physical activity, medical and health history, sleep scheduled hours, eating behaviors, oral health, mental disorders, and both general and reproductive health. Adolescents with complete data from the R24h, anthropometric assessment, and questionnaire were eligible for the present study, totaling 71,553 participants [25]. Students with total energy consumption of fewer than 500 kilocalories (kcal) and more than 6,000 kcal (n = 1,443) [26] and with sleep duration of fewer than 4 hours and more than 14 hours (n = 4,949) [27] were excluded from the sample to eliminate outliers that might have resulted from measurement errors.
Outcome variable
UPF consumption, in grams, was used as the outcome variable. The R24h was used and applied through interviews by trained researchers to assess food consumption. The interview technique used was that of multiple passages, which consists of an interview conducted in five stages to reduce underreporting of food consumption [28].
The data collected were recorded on netbooks using Brasil Nutri software. It included a list of 1,626 food items from the Food and Beverage Purchase Database from the 2002–2003 Family Budget Survey, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics [29]. Foods not included in the database were added by the interviewers.
After converting the food items into grams, the dataset was linked to the Table of Nutritional Composition of Foods Consumed in Brazil [30] and the Table of Referred Measures for Foods Consumed in Brazil [31] to obtain the caloric intake of each adolescent by calculating the conversion of grams of macronutrients to kcal.
Food items were classified according to the degree of processing in agreement with NOVA classification [32]. This classification divides foods into groups according to the type, extent, and purpose of the industrial processes to which they are submitted. These are natural and minimally processed foods, culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods [32]. Two independent researchers did the categorization of these foods in the NOVA classification. In case of discrepancies, a specialized researcher was contacted to determine the final result.
Explanatory variable
Sleep duration was used as an explanatory variable. Sleep-related data were obtained from the information in the tenth block of the adolescent questionnaire, which consists of questions about sleeping and waking time on weekdays and weekends. To measure sleep duration, the time the adolescents woke up was subtracted from the time they fell asleep. In cases where negative values were found, 24 hours were added to the final subtraction result.
In the present study, the 8 to 10 recommended hours of sleep per night were adopted for Brazilian adolescents [1–4]. The sleep duration variable was divided into recommended sleep duration (8 to 10 hours) and insufficient sleep duration (less than 8 hours and more than 10 hours).
Adjustment variables
The adjustment variables considered were: sex, self-reported skin color (white, black, brown, yellow, and indigenous), age (12–13, 14–15, and 16–17), socioeconomic score (high, medium, and low), consumption of fresh and minimally processed foods (in grams) obtained through R24h and successive classification by NOVA, consumption of processed foods (in grams) obtained through R24h and subsequent classification by NOVA, total energy value consumed (in kcal) obtained through of the R24h, physical activity, body mass index z-score, smoking and alcohol consumption.
The socioeconomic classification was defined by ERICA using the Brazilian Economic Classification Criteria (CCEB) of the Brazilian Association of Research Enterprises (ABEP) in its 2013 version [33], in which ownership of goods (color television, radio, bathroom, car, refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, and DVD player), presence of a domestic worker, and education of the head of the family were considered [33]. However, information on the mother's education was not obtained for 30.8% of the questionnaires. Excluding these adolescents would represent a significant sample loss. Therefore, we decided to use the "wealth proxy" adopted by Moura [34], renamed "socioeconomic score" in the present study, which consists of the CCEB but only considers the possession of goods and the presence of a labor force. Therefore, instead of analyzing the socioeconomic classification, the socioeconomic score was used and divided into three equal intervals (low socioeconomic score: 0 to 12; medium socioeconomic score: 13 to 25; high socioeconomic score: 26 to 38).
Physical activity practice was assessed using the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (FAQ), validated by Farias Junior et al. [35]. The physical activity practice variable considered the minutes of physical activity performed by adolescents per week, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of 300 minutes per week [36]. The physical activity variable was specified according to the categories used in the National School Health Survey (PeNSE) [37]. Adolescents, who did not engage in any type of activity (0 minutes), were categorized as inactive; those, who exercised between 1 and 149 minutes per week, were categorized as insufficiently active 1; those, who exercised between 150 and 299 minutes per week, were categorized as insufficiently active 2, and those, who exercised at least 300 minutes per week, were categorized as active. The body mass index z-score was determined from the adolescents' weight and height measurements.
Anthropometric measurements were taken from the entire sample by trained researchers. Weight was measured by a single evaluation on a Líder® electronic scale with a capacity of 200 kilograms and a variation of fifty grams, and height was obtained by the average of two measurements performed sequentially in a portable and detachable stadiometer of the Alturexata® brand, with millimeter and field resolution of use up to 213 centimeters.
The variable "smoking" was determined using the question: "Do you currently smoke?". The response options were "yes" and "no." Alcoholic beverage consumption was determined by the question: "How many days did you drink at least one glass or a dose of an alcoholic beverage in the past 30 days (one month)?". Responses were categorized as "do not consume" for those teenagers who had not consumed any type or quantity of alcoholic beverage on any day of the month before the survey and "consume" for those who had consumed at least one dose of any type of beverage.
Statistical analysis
The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to verify the hypothesis of normality of the quantitative variables of the study. To compare the average consumption of ultra-processed foods in grams between the variables stratified by sleep duration, the Student's T test was used for categorical variables with two categories and analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Bonferroni's test for categorical variables with more than two categories. Bivariate and multivariate analyses, in turn, were performed using linear regression models, with the dependent variable the consumption of UPF in grams and the independent variable the duration of sleep categorized according to the adopted recommendation. Beta with a 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was used as a measure of effect.
The final model relevance was evaluated by the F test of the variance analysis and the goodness-of-fit by the determination coefficient (R2). Residuals were evaluated according to normality, homoscedasticity, and linearity assumptions. In addition, multicollinearity was verified between the variables included in the model. The data obtained were analyzed using the Stata software version 14.0, adopting a significance value of 5%. All analyses used the survey module that considers the effects of the research's complex sampling plan.
Ethical aspects
The Research Ethics Committees of the Institute for Studies in Collective Health approved ERICA at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Opinion 01/2009) and in each state and Federal District. All adolescents who agreed to participate signed the consent form. When local ethics committees required informed consent from parents, that was required for students to participate in the study.