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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Public Health Nutr. 2019 Feb 21;22(10):1777–1785. doi: 10.1017/S1368980018003890

Table 1.

Baseline Participant Characteristics According to Quartiles of Frequency of Ultra-Processed Food Intakea

Quartiles of Frequency of Ultra-Processed Food Intake
Characteristic Quartile 1:
(n=2982)		 Quartile 2:
(n=2989)		 Quartile 3:
(n=2985)		 Quartile 4:
(n=2942)		 P-valueb
Ultra-processed food intake, times/day (range) 0-<2.6 2.6-<3.8 3.8-<5.2 5.2-<29.8 <0.001
Age, years 43±0.5 42±0.5 41±0.5 38±0.5 <0.001
Female sex 59 52 51 45 <0.001
Race/ethnicity
  Non-Hispanic white 65 77 81 80 <0.001
  Non-Hispanic black 11 9 9 12
  Mexican American 8 6 5 4
  Other 16 8 5 4
Poverty level
  <130% 20 16 15 18 <0.001
  130-<350% 40 43 47 49
  ≥350% 40 40 38 33
Education level
  Less than high school 25 20 20 21 <0.001
  High school 31 35 34 35
  More than high school 44 45 46 44
Smoking status
  Current 28 28 28 34 0.01
  Former 22 25 24 22
  Never 50 47 47 44
Physical activity, MET/wk 29±5.5 24±1.0 25±0.9 27±0.9 0.08
Alcohol intake, drinks/mo 8±0.6 9±0.6 9±0.4 10±0.7 0.09
Body mass index, kg/m2 26.2±0.1 26.3±0.1 26.1±0.2 26.2±0.2 0.95
Hypertension status 26 25 26 24 0.71
Total cholesterol, mg/dL 203±1.5 202±1.2 201±1.3 197±1.4 0.02
eGFR, mL/min/1.73 m2 101±0.5 102±0.6 102±0.6 105±0.5 <0.001

eGFR, estimated glomerular filtration rate; MET, metabolic equivalent of task

a

Values are means ± standard errors for continuous variables and % for categorical variables.

b

We tested for differences in baseline characteristics using weighted chi-square tests for categorical variables and weighted analysis of variance (ANOVA) for continuous variables.