Abstract
(1) Background: Adolescence is a period of increased autonomy and independent decision making; it determines health behaviors that can persist into the future. Individual factors like food choices and unhealthy lifestyle have an essential role in the development and prevention of obesity among adolescents and are associated with the nutrition literacy of parents and other adults. While the association of parents’ nutrition literacy with adolescent BMI has been addressed, there is still a scarcity of studies that examine the effect of adolescents’ nutrition literacy on their eating habits and body mass index (BMI) status. (2) Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted that included 189 adolescents (68 with overweight and obesity and 121 with normal weight) aged between 14–19 years from four private schools in Tripoli, Lebanon. A self-administered questionnaire that included the Nutrition Literacy Assessment Instrument (NLAI) and the Adolescent Food Habits Checklist (AFHC) was used. Anthropometrics were measured using standardized procedures. The association between nutrition literacy, food habits and BMI was assessed using a chi squared test for independence and Poisson regression analysis where suitable. (3) Results: Results indicated no association between all five components of nutrition literacy and body mass index categories. Furthermore, there was no association between the Adolescent Food Habits Checklist and overweight or obese BMI status (RR = 0.947, 95%CI: 0.629–1.426) (p = 0.796). No association was observed between nutrition literacy and food habits, except for an inverse association with macronutrients literacy. (4) Conclusions: In conclusion, the study indicated that there was no association between the components of nutrition literacy with body mass index or with food habits, except for macronutrient literacy.
Highlights
Adolescence is a period characterized by increased autonomy and independent decision making and can determine health related behaviors, namely dietary intake [1,2]
There was no association between the Adolescent Food Habits Checklist and overweight or obese body mass index (BMI) status (RR = 0.947, 95%CI: 0.629–1.426) (p = 0.796)
The results indicated that there was no association between all the components of nutrition literacy (MA, nutritional health (NH), household food measure (HFM), food label reading (FLN) and food groups (FG)) and BMI categories
Summary
Adolescence is a period characterized by increased autonomy and independent decision making and can determine health related behaviors, namely dietary intake [1,2]. Nutrition-related behaviors develop as a result of changes in situations and responsibilities as molded by social pressure and social norms; these can influence nutrition knowledge and skills Both healthy and unhealthy behaviors adopted during adolescence persist into adulthood [3,4,5]. Adolescents’ dietary patterns are characterized by skipping meals, frequent snacking, and consumption of fast food, processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages [1,6] These dietary patterns have health implications that persist throughout one’s life, like weight gain and increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type-two diabetes, some types of cancers, sarcopenic obesity and impaired quality of life [6,7,8,9,10,11]. Nutrition-related problems and behaviors have been recently reported to be associated with nutrition literacy, especially among adolescents [12,13,14]
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