Abstract
Healthy eating can prevent individuals across all age groups from developing overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, unhealthy eating habits (e.g., a high level of fast food consumption) have been found to be widespread among university students. Thus, it seems necessary to develop prevention strategies to improve students’ eating habits. However, to ensure that such strategies are successful, it is important that they fit the needs of the target population. By conducting qualitative interviews with students (n = 20), we aimed to get a deeper understanding of barriers to healthy eating. Students were asked about barriers to healthy eating and to suggest possible ideas that could improve their eating behavior in the future. Our findings revealed that students are especially affected by time-related barriers (e.g., a lack of time due to university commitment) and environmental barriers (e.g., a lack of cheap, tasty, and healthy meal options at the university canteen). Time-related barriers were also related to motivational barriers (e.g., being too lazy to cook after a busy day at university). In addition, knowledge/information-related barriers, social-support-related barriers, and transition-related barriers emerged from our interviews. The variety of barriers addressed and the different views on some of these, indicate that various strategies seem to be needed to improve the eating behavior among university students and to prevent them from gaining weight and developing non-communicable diseases in the future.
Highlights
It is widely acknowledged that healthy eating can prevent people across all age groups from weight gain and developing overweight/obesity [1,2]
Unhealthy eating habits have been commonly found among university students in different countries worldwide [3]
University students that participated in the qualitative study were between 20 and 26 years old and 65% were female (n = 13)
Summary
It is widely acknowledged that healthy eating can prevent people across all age groups from weight gain and developing overweight/obesity [1,2]. Unhealthy eating habits have been commonly found among university students in different countries worldwide [3]. High fast food consumption, low consumption of fruits/vegetables, and irregular meal patterns such as skipping breakfast and frequent snacking have been reported [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Few studies have examined the eating habits of university students from Germany, but existing studies suggest that especially the low consumption of fruits and vegetables (between 70%–95% of students do not meet the recommendation of eating five or more portions a day) is of concern [4,10,11].
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