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Objective:The present study aimed at surveying the nutritional quality of prepacked biscuits and sweet snacks sold on the Italian market, and at identifying whether the product type and other information reported on the pack could discriminate the overall quality of products analysed.Design:Data on energy, nutrient and salt content of the products from two different categories of prepacked sweet cereal products (i.e. biscuits and sweet snacks) were collected from thirteen retailers present on the Italian market. Based on the product type, nutrition and health claim (NHC) and gluten-free (GF) declaration, a comparison of nutrient profile within each category was performed.Setting:This work is part of the Food Labelling of Italian Products (FLIP) study that aims at systematically investigating the overall quality of the prepacked foods sold on the Italian market.Results:A total of 1290 products were analysed (63 % biscuits and 37 % sweet snacks). After comparing different product types within each category, a high intra-type product variability was evidenced, which was more pronounced for biscuits. Overall, NHC-carrying products seemed to have a better nutrition profile than those without claims, except for salt content. Conversely, a comparison between GF and gluten-containing products did not show consistent results within the two categories analysed.Conclusions:Due to the high intra-type variability within each category, the different characteristics and regulated information reported on the pack do not seem to be a clear marker of the overall nutritional quality of biscuits and snacks.

The packaged foods sold in food stores may be “private-label” products (PL), when branded by the supermarket, and “branded” products (BR). PL products are generally cheaper than the BR counterparts, and this can be perceived as a sign of general low quality by consumers, when items are compared with their branded counterparts. Thus, the aim of the present study was to compare the nutrient content of BR and PL cereal-based foods, by evaluating the nutritional declaration reported on the food pack of products on the home-shopping website of major retailers present on the Italian market. A total of 3,775 items (~58% BR and ~42% PL), collected in the period from July 2018 to March 2019 and updated in March 2020, were included in the final analysis. Data were analyzed by means of the Mann–Whitney nonparametric test for two independent samples for differences between BR and PL categories and types. Overall, BR products showed higher contents of total and saturates than PL items. When products were grouped for categories and types, items only differed for the content of total fats, saturates, total carbohydrates, proteins, and salt. No differences were instead found for energy and sugar contents among any of the categories. However, we did not find any consistency in the direction of results. These results could be useful for future education activities aimed to help consumers in making informed food choices.

In epidemiology science, the importance to explore innovative modeling tools for acutely analyzing epidemic diffusion is turning into a big challenge considering the myriad of real-world aspects to capture. Typically, equation-based models, such as SIS and SIR, are used to study the propagation of diseases over a population. Improved approaches also include human-mobility patterns as network information to describe contacts among individuals. However, there still is the need to incorporate in these models information about different types of contagion, geographical information, humans habits, and environmental properties. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that takes into account: 1. direct and indirect epidemic contagion pathways to explore the dynamics of the epidemic, 2. the times of possible contagions, and 3. human-mobility patterns. We combine these three features exploiting time-varying hypergraphs, and we embed this model into a design-methodology for agent-based models (ABMs), able to improve the correctness in the epidemic estimations of classical contact-network approaches. We further describe a diffusion algorithm suitable for our design-methodology and adaptable to the peculiarities of any disease spreading policies and/or models. Finally, we tested our methodology by developing an ABM, realizing the SIS epidemic compartmental model, for simulating an epidemic propagation over a population of individuals. We experimented the model using real user-mobility data from the location-based social network Foursquare, and we demonstrated the high-impact of temporal direct and indirect contagion pathways.

Breakfast cereals are present on the market as different types and, in general, are one of the food categories in which voluntary information, such as nutrition or health claims (NHC) or gluten free (GF) declarations, have the largest distribution. The aims of the present study were to compare (i) the nutritional declaration among different types of breakfast cereals, as well as among products with and without NHC or GF declarations, and (ii) the salt and sugar contents with the &ldquo, Italian shared objectives for the improvement of the nutritional characteristics of food&rdquo, To this aim, the nutrition declarations of 371 different breakfast cereal items, available in 13 retailers present on the Italian market, were analysed. Data showed an elevated inter-product variability, with cereal bars and muesli having the highest energy, total fat, and saturate contents per 100 g. Limited differences were found comparing products with and without NHC, as well as those with GF declaration. Most of the breakfast cereals were compliant to the shared objectives, although some items with NHC or GF declaration still have sugar or salt contents higher than these objectives. In conclusion, these data suggest that the different characteristics and the regulated information reported on the food label should not be considered as a marker of the overall nutritional quality. Thus, this study supports the importance of reading and understanding the information made on food label.