Effects of eating outside the home on adolescent diet quality

Abstract

Location of meal consumption can affect the quality of adolescents’ diet. The main goal of this study was to observe if eating outside the home affects diet quality of 607 adolescents from the CRO-PALS longitudinal study. 24-hour recall was used as a dietary assessment method and meal location was also recorded during the interview. Two measurements were taken: one in the first and one in the final year of high school, so the goal was also to determine the differences between the groups and between the two measurements. As expected, considering previous studies, adolescents who had a higher energy intake consumed outside the home showed lower diet quality, more so in the case of girls and during the first year.