Changes in meal frequency among adolescents living in a socially vulnerable area of the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, Brazil.

This study described changes in meal frequency over a 5-year period among adolescents living in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region. The data used were from two cross-sectional, population-based studies conducted by home visits. In 2005 the final sample was 1089 households with 511 adolescents (aged 12 to 18 years) and in 2010, 1121 households with 314 adolescents. Meal frequency was obtained through self-administered questionnaire and the adolescents were assessed for appropriate weight by BMI cut-off points, by sex and age group. Increasingly, traditional daily lunch was replaced by snacks (from 3.7% to 13.7%) and traditional dinner was eaten (62.9% to 72.0%). Overweight adolescents ate breakfast less often than those not overweight (in 2005, 68.3% and 79.3%, p=0.02 and, in 2010, 59.5% and 77.4%, p=0.03). Traditional daily lunch was increasingly replaced by snacks and consumption of traditional dinner increased over the 5-year period. Also, eating breakfast every day was associated with BMI classification at both study times: those who were overweight consumed breakfast less frequently.