Association between food habits with mental health and executive function in chilean children and adolescents Caamaño Navarrete, Felipe Del-Cuerpo, Indya Arriagada Hernández, Carlos Cresp Barria, Mauricio Hernández Mosqueira, Claudio Contreras Díaz, Guido Valdés-Badilla, Pablo Jerez Mayorga, Daniel Alejandro Delgado-Floody, Pedro children foods habits depression Objective: To determine the association between foods habits with mental health (i.e., anxiety, depression, and stress) and executive function (i.e., attention, inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) in Chilean children and adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional study with 498 children and adolescents (52.6% female) aged 10–17 years participated. The Krece Plus questionnaire (Food habits), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21, metal health), and the CogniFit (executive functions) test were used to assess the study variables. Results: The poor and moderate food habits groups reported higher prevalence of extremely severe anxiety (poor, 40.8%; moderate, 41.4%; good, 21.6%; p = 0.013) and extremely severe depression (poor, 20.4%; moderate, 21.3%; good, 5.7%; p < 0.001). The food habits were linked inversely to anxiety (β −0.07, 95%CI −0.11 to −0.03, p = 0.001), depression (β −0.08, 95%CI −0.12 to −0.04, p < 0.001), stress (β −0.07, 95%CI −0.11 to −0.02, p = 0.004), and total score of negative mental health (β −0.03, 95%CI −0.04 to −0.01, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The food habits were inversely associated with negative metal health in Chilean children and adolescents, where the good food habits group reported better mental health in all dimensions. 2025-03-07T10:42:44Z 2025-03-07T10:42:44Z 2025-02-22 journal article Caamaño-Navarrete, F.; del-Cuerpo, I.; Arriagada-Hernández, C.; Cresp-Barria, M.; Hernández- Mosqueira, C.; Contreras-Díaz, G.; Valdés-Badilla, P.; Jerez-Mayorga, D.; Delgado-Floody, P. Association Between Food Habits with Mental Health and Executive Function in Chilean Children and Adolescents. Children 2025, 12, 268. https:// doi.org/10.3390/children12030268 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/102913 10.3390/children12030268 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional MDPI