The consumption of processed foods is increasingly widespread and could have an impact on diet quality and health. Understanding the factors influencing people's eating habits is useful for assessing such impact. There are limited data on the consumption patterns of processed foods and associated factors influencing the dietary patterns in Singapore. This cross-sectional study based on a food frequency questionnaire aimed to examine how the consumption of processed foods among 2079 Singapore residents aged 18 to 89 years varies with sociodemographic factors. The analysis of the consumption by processed food groups showed that the studied factors, i.e., age, gender, ethnicity, housing and health status, all contributed to differences in processed food consumption to varying extents, with ethnicity being the key factor driving the variation. Such differences were also confirmed to a limited degree by determining another measure of consumption, i.e., a processed food variety score. The findings in this study could inform further work in relation to dietary risks.
Keywords: consumption pattern; food frequency questionnaire; processed foods; sociodemographic factors.