Nutritional Characterization of Street Food in Urban Turkmenistan, Central Asia

FeedCities Project

Objective: Describing the availability and nutritional composition of the most commonly available street foods in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Methods: One hundred sixty-one street food vending sites (six public markets) were assessed, through a collection of data on vending sites’ characteristics and food availability, and samples of commonly available foods (21 homemade; 11 industrial), for chemical analysis. Results: Fruit, beverages, and food other than fruit were available in 6.8, 29.2, and 91.9% of all vending sites, respectively. Regarding the latter, 52.7% of the vending sites sold only homemade products (main dishes, snacks, cakes, biscuits and pastries, bread, ice-cream chocolate and confectionery, savory pastries and sandwiches), 37.2% only industrial (ice-cream, chocolate and confectionery, cakes, biscuits and pastries, snacks, bread and savory pastries) and 10.1% both. Homemade foods presented significantly higher total fat [homemade 11.6 g (range 6.6–19.4 g); industrial 6.2 g (range 4.0–8.6 g), p = 0.001], monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and trans-fat, and sodium and potassium content per serving. Industrial wafers presented the highest mean saturated (11.8 g/serving) and trans-fat (2.32 g/serving) content. Homemade hamburgers presented the highest mean sodium content (1889 mg/serving). Conclusions: Strategies to encourage the production and sales of healthier street foods, especially homemade, are needed to promote healthier urban food environments in urban Turkmenistan.

The FEEDcities project was funded by the World Health Organization Europe (WHO registration 2015/591370 and 2017/698514). This study was financed through national funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology—FCT (Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education), under the project UIDB/04750/2020. Individual PhD grants attributed to GA (SFRH/BD/118630/2016) and SS (SFRH/BD/130650/2017) were funded by FCT and the Programa Operacional Capital Humano (POCH/FSE). The funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this paper.

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