Background and Objective:
In Brazil, lunch is the most consumed meal and it is the meal with the highest energy intake of the day. The combination of food items in this meal, provides the main nutrients among Brazilian adults. We aimed to investigate the relationship between lunch dietary patterns and overweight among Brazilian Adults.

Methods:
We used 28,191 individuals aged 19-59 years (excluding pregnant and breastfeeding) from the National Dietary Survey (2017–2018). We included the food items consumed at lunch in 14 food groups. Lunch dietary patterns were derived by principal component factor analysis (Varimax rotation). The patterns scores were classified accordingly to terciles (lower, median, and higher adherence to the pattern). To access the association between overweight (BMI ≥25 kg/m²) and the dietary patterns we applied logistic regression adjusted by age, schooling, sex, region and total energy intake. All analysis were made considering the study design.

Results:
Only 3.27% of the adults did not mention having lunch. Among the those that consumed lunch we found three patterns: Traditional Brazilian (rice, beans and red meat), Vegetable and Salads (vegetable, salads, oils, red meat, and processed meat) and protein dish with side dishes (white meat, juices and sweets). We found that adults with higher adherence to the Vegetable and Salads lunch patterns are associated to 18% higher chance of overweight in comparison to the lower adherence (OR=1.18 [1.08; 1.30]).

Conclusions:
Despite that the Vegetable and Salad lunch pattern includes health food, it also contains fat and oil and red meat/processed meat, and is directedly associated to overweight in Brazilian adults.