Adherence to school meals and co-occurrence of the healthy and unhealthy food markers among Brazilian adolescents

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between adherence to school meals and the co-occurrence of the regular consumption of healthy and unhealthy eating markers among Brazilian adolescents. Data from 67,881 adoles-cents in Brazilian public schools who participat-ed in the 2015 National School Health Survey, were used. From the 7-day FFQ, the dependent variable was constructed, co-occurrence of reg-ular consumption (>_ 5x/week) of healthy and unhealthy food markers, which was categorized as regular consumption of none, one or two, or three eating markers. We performed an ordinal logistic regression with adjustment for sociode-mographic, eating habits outside of school, and school characteristics variables. The prevalence of the co-occurrence of the regular consumption of three healthy eating markers was 14.5%, and that of three unhealthy markers was 4.9%. High ad-herence to school meals (every day) was positively associated with regular consumption of healthy eating markers and inversely associated with reg-ular consumption of unhealthy eating markers. The school meals provided by PNAE contribute to the promotion of healthy eating habits among Brazilian adolescents.