nutrients Article Deconstructing the Supermarket: Systematic Ingredient Disaggregation and the Association between Ingredient Usage and Product Health Indicators for 24,229 Australian Foods and Beverages Allison Gaines 1,* , Maria Shahid 2, Liping Huang 2, Tazman Davies 2, Fraser Taylor 2, Jason HY Wu 2 and Bruce Neal 1,2 1 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK;
[email protected] 2 The George Institute for Global Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2042, Australia;
[email protected] (M.S.);
[email protected] (L.H.);
[email protected] (T.D.);
[email protected] (F.T.);
[email protected] (J.H.W.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: Unhealthy diets are underpinned by the over-consumption of packaged products. Data describing the ingredient composition of these products is limited. We sought to define the ingredients used in Australian packaged foods and beverages and assess associations between the number of ingredients and existing health indicators. Statements of ingredients were disaggregated, creating Citation: Gaines, A.; Shahid, M.; separate fields for each ingredient and sub-ingredient. Ingredients were categorised and the average Huang, L.; Davies, T.; Taylor, F.; Wu, number of ingredients per product was calculated. Associations between number of ingredients and J.H.; Neal, B. Deconstructing the both the nutrient-based Health Star Rating (HSR) and the NOVA level-of-processing classification Supermarket: Systematic Ingredient were assessed. A total of 24,229 products, listing 233,113 ingredients, were included. Products had Disaggregation and the Association between 1 and 62 ingredients (median (Interquartile range (IQR)): 8 (3–14)).