Abstract
Dietary practices of college students were compared before and after implementation of the University Restaurant (UR) and examined according to frequency of UR use. A natural experiment was conducted with students (n = 1131) of a Brazilian public university using a validated self-completed and identified questionnaire that inquired information on practices of substituting lunch and/or dinner with a snack (≥ 5 days/week) and on regular consumption of foods that were markers of a healthy or unhealthy diet. At the second time point, UR use by students was also assessed based on their attendance to it. Changes in food practices were examined by determining differences in proportions between the two assessments. The analysis of the association between UR use and each dietary practice was carried out using multiple logistic regression models. An association was observed between greater UR use and higher frequency of regular consumption of beans, vegetables, raw vegetables, cooked vegetables and fruit and lower frequency of regular consumption of French fries and/or fried snacks. The UR proved to be an environment that facilitated the adoption of healthy dietary practices and promoted improvement in the diets of the students who were more assiduous to the restaurant.
Highlights
The organizational food environment, characterized by schools, universities, workplaces, among others, constitutes a strategic setting for promoting a healthy diet, since it has a strong influence on the dietary behaviors of the individuals frequenting this environment[1,2,3]
A natural experiment was conducted with historical control in a population of students enrolled in the first semester of 2011 on 31 undergraduate courses offered by the 24 academic units of the Maracanã campus and that continued frequenting the university during the second academic semester of 2012
It should be noted that the decrease in proportion of students that regularly consumed markers of an unhealthy diet (MUD), except for French fries and/or fried snacks, and that replaced dinner with snacks occurred independently of University Restaurant (UR) use, as it can be seen comparing the numbers observed for no users of Restaurante Universitário (RU) (Tables 2 and 3) with those before RU implementation (Tables 1 and 4)
Summary
The organizational food environment, characterized by schools, universities, workplaces, among others, constitutes a strategic setting for promoting a healthy diet, since it has a strong influence on the dietary behaviors of the individuals frequenting this environment[1,2,3]. Among these food environments, the university campus warrants special attention given that while at university students acquire eating habits that can persist into adult life, thereby representing a unique opportunity for promoting a healthy diet[4,5,6,7]. We found no previous studies addressing the impact of changes in the campus food environment after implementation of a University Restaurant (UR)
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