Croat. J. Food Sci. Technol. (2020) 12 (1) 67-76 67 Croatian Journal of Food Science and Technology journal homepage: www.ptfos.unios.hr/cjfst/ Original scientific paper DOI: 10.17508/CJFST.2020.12.1.09 Consumption of fibre rich foods: comparative study in different countries RAQUEL P. F. GUINÉ 1* , SOFIA G. FLORENÇA 2 , MARCELA LEAL 3 , IVANA RUMBAK 4 , IRENA BARIĆ 4 , DRAZENKA KOMES 4 , ZVONIMIR SATALIĆ 5 , MARIJANA SARIĆ 5 , MONICA TARCEA 6 , ZITA FAZAKAS 6 , VIKTÓRIA SZŰCS 7 , JÚLIA HARANGOZÓ 7 , DACE KLAVA 8 , EVITA STRAUMITE 8 1 Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, CI&DETS/CERNAS Research Centres, Viseu, Portugal 2 University of Porto, Faculty of Food and Nutrition Sciences, Porto, Portugal 3 Maimonides University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Maimonides, Argentina 4 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, Zagreb, Croatia 5 University of Zadar, Department of Health Studies, Zadar, Croatia 6 University of Medicine and Pharmacy from Tirgu-Mures, Dep. of Community Nutrition & Food Safety, Tirgu-Mures, Romania 7 National Agricultural R&I Centre, Food Science Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary 8 Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Dep. Food Technology, Jelgava, Latvia ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Received: August 26, 2019 Accepted: December 8, 2019 Foods such as fruit, vegetables, and cereals, and particularly whole grain, are rich in dietary fibre and have been proved to have multiple beneficial effects for the human health. The present research was designed to assess some eating practices related to fibre-rich foods in different countries, namely Argentina, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Portugal, and Romania. A cross-sectional descriptive study was undertaken on a sample of 4905 adult participants, obeying all ethical guidelines for this type of research. Regarding the data treatment, basic statistics was complemented with the tree classification analysis. Generally, the results show a low consumption of salads and vegetables, i.e., up to 11 servings/week (for 78.2% of participants), with Croatia in the lead (86.6%). Regarding fruit, a great majority of data also indicated low consumption (92.3%), most especially for Latvia (98.3%). The level of consumption of whole cereals was also low (72.6%), particularly for Latvia (90.0%). The tree classification analysis showed that while the first discriminant variable for the consumption of salads and vegetables was country, followed by education, for the consumption of fruit, it was country and then sex, and finally, for the consumption of whole cereals, it was sex and followed by country. The results allowed the conclusion that the consumption of foods rich in dietary fibre was very low for these countries, highlighting the necessity to implement strategies that incentivise the consumption of such foods, which are very important for a healthy diet. Keywords: healthy diet fruit survey vegetable whole cereal Introduction  Although there is not a one universal definition for dietary fibre (DF), it is assumed it refers to the constituents of non-digestible carbohydrates of three or more monomeric units found inherently in foods, but it can also include isolated or synthetic fibres with demonstrated physiologic benefits (such as resistant starches) or other minor components (like lignin), which are associated with non-digestible * Corresponding author E-mail: raquelguine@esav.ipv.pt carbohydrates in plant cell walls. The polysaccharides that constitute DF are very diverse regarding their composition, structure, or size (Jakobek and Matić, 2019; Qi and Tester, 2019; Stephen et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018). The sources of different molecular species of DF are varied and depend on the plant origin as well as on the tissue from where they were obtained (Qi and Tester, 2019). In recent decades, DFs are receiving considerable attention, because many studies connect them to