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Abstract
Starch-based processed foods are becoming increasingly popular in the daily diets of university students. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 185 first- and second-year Bachelor of Nutrition students at Hanoi Medical University during the 2025–2026 academic year to characterize consumption patterns and evaluate cumulative dietary exposure risks to benzoates and sorbates across 42 starch-based processed food items. Food consumption frequency and portion sizes were collected using a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) on REDCap integrated with a standardized Food Atlas; preservative concentrations in food samples collected from Dong Da district, Hanoi, were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV) according to TCVN 8122:2009 [8]. Chronic dietary exposure was estimated using a deterministic point-estimate model under the Upper Bound (UB) scenario [1, 2]. Results indicated that instant noodles had the highest consumption prevalence among students (79.46%; mean intake of 14.99 g/day), followed by unpackaged bread (47.57%; 12.87 g/day) and fresh rice noodles (bún tươi) (28.65%; 9.76 g/day). Mean benzoate concentrations were highest in mung bean cake (199.4 mg/kg) and pia cake (115.1 mg/kg), whereas sorbate concentrations peaked in mung bean cake (297.2 mg/kg) and packaged pastries (284.9 mg/kg). All analyzed samples (100%) complied with the maximum allowable limits (ML) set by the Ministry of Health under Circular 24/2019/TT-BYT [4]. The cumulative mean estimated daily intake (EDI_mean) across all 42 food items was 0.03703 mg/kg bw/day for benzoate (equivalent to 0.7406% ADI) and 0.07151 mg/kg bw/day for sorbate (equivalent to 0.2860% ADI) [3]. Under the 95th percentile (P95) high-consumption scenario, cumulative exposure reached 2.3700% ADI for benzoate and 0.9872% ADI for sorbate [3]. Unpackaged bread was the primary contributor to total dietary exposure for both benzoate (42.42%) and sorbate (36.68%). Preservative exposure levels from starch-based foods among Bachelor of Nutrition students remain well within safe health thresholds (< 1% ADI for mean intake and < 2.5% ADI under the P95 scenario) [3]. Nutrition communication should guide students toward rational convenience food selection and product label reading skills rather than advocating an absolute prohibition of processed foods.
References
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