Abstract
ABSTRACTBackground/Objectives: To assess dietary patterns (DPs) in European adolescents and to examine their relationship with healthy eating determinants.Subject/Methods: A total of 2205 European adolescents, aged 12.5–17.5 years, were measured. A self-reported questionnaire was completed and dietary intake was measured by 24 h-dietary recalls. Principal component analysis was performed to obtain DPs. Analyses of covariance was used to examine the associations.Results: Four DPs for boys and six DPs for girls were obtained. Boys with healthier DPs, i.e. “plant-based” and “breakfast”, had lower availability of soft drinks at home, higher perception of benefits of healthy eating and higher awareness of what is a healthy diet. Girls with healthy DPs (“Mediterranean”, “plant-based”, “healthy breakfast”) had significantly higher fruits and lower soft drinks availability, higher perception of benefits, lower perception of barriers for a healthy eating and higher awareness of what is a healthy diet.Conclusion: Healthier DPs were related with availability of healthy foods, perceived benefits and awareness of the diet. In contrast, those with other patterns had lower availability of fruits and higher availability of soft drinks at home, no perception of the benefits of healthy eating and they were aware that their diet was not healthy.
Highlights
Childhood overweight continues to be a major and growing public health problem recently a plateau in the prevalence of obesity has been observed in several regions of the world (Rokholm et al 2010; Collaboration NCDRF 2017)
The main findings from this study in European adolescents are that some determinants of healthy eating are associated with the identified dietary patterns (DPs)
Among European adolescents, we found different DPs in boys and girls
Summary
Childhood overweight continues to be a major and growing public health problem recently a plateau in the prevalence of obesity has been observed in several regions of the world (Rokholm et al 2010; Collaboration NCDRF 2017). Childhood obesity is associated with multiple comorbidities at a later age, including increased risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, fatty liver disease, sleep apnoea and cancer (Batch and Baur 2005; Daniels 2009; Rokholm et al 2010). Overweight is generally caused by a lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating patterns (Moreno and Rodriguez 2007; Rey-Lopez et al 2008; Brug et al 2010; de Gouw et al 2010; Landsberg et al 2010). The analysis of dietary patterns (DPs) gives a more holistic impression of the food consumption habits within a population (Hu 2002). Understanding how determinants of the different lifestyle factors are related with food consumption and DPs is relevant to promote effective lifestyle interventions (Brug et al 2012)
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